Hate To Wait For Coffee? There’s An App For That

Starbucks has been successful with attracting customers using their mobile app, as CEO Howard Schultz has credited their sales to the convenience of mobile payments and their loyalty program.

The company declined to say what percentage of its orders in Portland, where the system has been in place for nine months, come from its mobile order and pay service. Mobile Order and Pay now boast of over 16 million active users in major cities such as Florida and Texas.

Starbucks is the latest in a line of big-brand companies to introduce a mobile ordering and pickup service – Taco Bell launched a similar service in the US last October.

Through the company’s smartphone app, customers can order their preferred beverage and are given an estimated time on when it will be ready. Besides busy professionals, he said other popular user groups include parents with young children and time-crunched workers, like admins or hospital workers, who only have a limited amount of time for breaks. Pick up is normally done from a designated store. They can place their order on their phone, knowing that it will be understood.

Generally, it is around three to five minutes.

What’s hilarious is that it’s blatantly designed to appeal to exactly the kind of person you do not want to be stuck behind in Starbucks, even if the company themselves will never admit it. They even have the nutritional information built into it, although now it doesn’t change when you tweak your order. In part, he said it is doing well because it is resonating with so many consumer segments.

The new app update joins Starbucks’ “evenings” program as the second major announcement this year (not counting the new, more-natural pumpkin spice lattes). But in this case, instead of customers picking up orders themselves at a nearby store, order deliveries will be executed in partnership with Postmates.

The app also makes it far less likely that baristas will mangle a customer’s name-something that Beranek joked he might miss a little.

The only function really missing was the ability to order your drinks and food…up until now.

Is there a separate area where people pick up their orders?