Interns of the world rejoice! (Or maybe cower in fear, depending upon how much importance you place on your coffee-running abilities.) Starbucks has announced that they are teaming up with Uber Eats to offer delivery coffee from nearly a quarter of their company-owned US stores.
According to Forbes, the Seattle coffee chain will roll out delivery at nearly 2,000 stores during the first quarter of 2019. After a successful expansion into China that was bolstered by a delivery partnership with Alibaba, Starbucks is leaning more heavily on delivery, which is already showing signs of profitability domestically. From Forbes:
In the past two years, U.S. mobile orders for delivery and pay at Starbucks’ U.S. company-owned stores have more than doubled to 12% of those stores’ total sales, from 5%. That outpaced the growth in drive-through sales, which increased to 37% of the total, from 34%, during the same period, Starbucks said Thursday. Meanwhile, orders made at brick-and-mortar cafés declined to 51% of the business, from 61%.
Starbucks has been testing delivery with Uber Eats in Tokyo and Miami and is now ready to make the move nationwide. It’s part of the company’s 2019 growth strategy that also includes bringing nitro cold brew to all company-operated stores by the end of the 2019 fiscal year “to meet growing consumer demand” as well as opening its second US-based Starbucks Reserve Roastery—this one in New York’s Meatpacking district—to compete with “the growing crop of specialty coffee shops like Blue Bottle Coffee.”
Now, getting your mid-day Bux fix will be easier than ever. Too bad your drink will be dead by the time it gets to you. Hopefully by 2020, they will roll out a new “barista on a scooter” initiative to make drinks at your preferred destination. Or, you know, just got get the damn coffee yourself.
Zac Cadwalader is the news editor at Sprudge Media Network and a staff writer based in Dallas. Read more Zac Cadwalader on Sprudge.
Top image via Skyscraperpage.
