Starbucks To Start Delivering In 2015

 

 

 

In its quarterly earnings call yesterday, Starbucks said it was exploring ways to get customers their caffeine fix store-free.

Coming soon: Pumpkin spice lattes, delivered piping hot and extra pumpkin-y, right to your office doorstep.

In its quarterly earnings call on Thursday, Starbucks CEO Howard Schultz said that the coffee chain planned on implementing a mobile ordering and payment system set to launch in the second half of 2015. “Imagine the ability to create a standing order of Starbucks delivered hot to your desk daily,” Schultz said. “That’s our version of e-commerce on steroids.”

How that would work out logistically still isn’t clear. “Its very early days at this but we are moving ahead, full speed ahead,” said Matt Ryan, Starbucks global chief strategy officer, on the call. “The pilots are coming soon. We are going to be looking at a number of different options. There will probably be a multiple number of solutions that we go with them in terms of how we operationalize this. And at this point, we are not ready to tip our hand on that but suffice it to say we have lots of different ways of doing this in front of us and you can expect to see things in 2015.”

Starbucks has been experimenting with new ways to get its customers their caffeine fix, from designing kitschy (and faster!) drive-thru-only franchises, to risky strategic partnerships with Groupon and Square. The company certainly hasn’t shied away from taking technological leaps, with 12 million+ customers already using its mobile app.

Starbucks delivery feels, in many ways, somewhat inevitable, especially if it helps alleviate the morning in-store bottleneck. The Seamless-ification of the service industry inches onward.

[h/t: CNBC]

[Photo: Flickr user Neil Turner]

 

 

 

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