Starbucks will be teaming up with Uber Eats to start delivering coffee in six major cities in the US. The announcement was made on Tuesday. Uber Eats will work with Starbucks Delivers in this venture. Starbucks Delivers is a coffee delivery service that has been in operation for Starbucks over the last few years. The new partnership will see Starbucks deliver coffee in San Francisco, Chicago, Boston, Washington D.C., and New York. The service will start operating in San Francisco on Tuesday and will then start to roll out in the other cities over the coming few weeks. The aim is to make sure that the service is available in all the selected six cities in less than a month.
Starbucks says that Uber Eats couriers will be able to pick deliveries from at least a quarter of all its stores. This totals to about 3,500 outlets. The coffee chain also said that customers will be able to order at least 95% of its menu through the Uber Eats app. Starbucks is promising its customers delivery within 30 minutes. The company did also confirm that it had come up with specialized packaging solutions that will ensure the coffee remains hot for the entire duration of delivery. The delivery will attract a $2.49 base booking fee. This will not include the cost of the coffee, the food, and the courier travel that gets you the order.
Starbucks sees this as a convenient service designed to target customers who may not have the time or the means to pop into a Starbucks store and get in their order. The company started testing the delivery in Miami during the fall of 2018 and based on recent reports, the tests were indeed a success. This prompted the chain to start rolling out the service into new markets and six cities are in line to benefit. A statement by Starbucks revealed that the plan is to have the service available in seven cities across the country.
The six already announced will get the roll out in a month but the seventh unnamed city will have to wait until the spring of 2019. There’s also a plan to make the service available in London. However, Starbucks has not said when and how it intends to make this happen.
Starbucks is one of the major coffee chains in the market. The company has a total of 29,000 stores across the world. Uber Eats, on the other hand, has managed to build a strong presence as a food delivery service. The app is available in 36 countries and you can use it to order food and drinks from a total of 200,000 restaurants.
Starbucks says that the partnership with Uber Eats will indeed bring together one of the fastest growing food delivery services in the world and one of the largest retailers of food and beverages. It’s not clear though if the service will expand into more countries or locations around the world. But so far, Starbucks and Uber Eats have already hit the ground running in this venture.
