Starbucks (SBUX – Get Report) announced today that it will pilot a food and beverage delivery service at New York’s Empire State Building.
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Based on the company’s statement, baristas and a delivery team working from the 33rd Street side of the Empire State Building will prepare the orders and deliver them to customers within 30 minutes.
If the pilot project goes well, a broader roll-out of Green Aprons Delivery is expected.
The company notes that it chose the Empire State Building to run its first tests of Green Apron because of its “bustling work environment” which features a large number of tenants. The service promises a 30-minute delivery to customers in the Empire State Building. In large metro areas it may be hard to keep up with the apps demand since Starbucks has almost 300 locations across New York City.
Customers can only order up to 15 items, so don’t think you can have Starbucks come cater your weekly office meeting. Starbucks has about 11,100 stores in the United States.
Starbucks has for years invested heavily in IT infrastructure to support mobile ordering and pay as a major leg of its plan to build customer loyalty and drive additional visits, and is now rolling out a delivery service to bring their caffeinated drinks and snacks directly to workers in the famous New York skyscraper. Drage said that the company is waving the delivery fee for the rest of October.
Starbucks is letting its customers skip long lines and order coffee ahead of time.
These workers will have to pay a $2 service fee – regardless if they order one beverage or 10 – to have the luxury of staying at their desks instead going down to the lobby, since the orders will be coming from the Starbucks Express (which is located in the lobby of the building).
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For example, one measure taken with this objective in mind was launching a mobile ordering and pay app. The program has been implemented in all of the 7,400 Starbucks locations in the US, and allows clients to place requests from their cell phones, in advance to actually arriving at their chosen coffeehouse. For that city, Starbucks is partnering with courier service Postmates.
