Starbucks app users can now skip the line entirely
HOLLIE SHAW, FINANCIAL POST
Starbucks Canada has launched a mobile order, pay and pickup feature on its app.
/ FINANCIAL POST
TORONTO — Starbucks Canada introduced a new variant to its multi-hyphenated speciality coffee orders on Tuesday — a digital way to skip the long lineup.
The world’s largest coffee chain has introduced an enhancement to Canadian users of its mobile payment app that allows them to place an order and pay for it in advance, well before they cross the café’s threshold.
“This is one of our busiest stores in North America in the morning,” Jessica Mills, director of brand and digital at Starbucks Canada, said Tuesday at the service’s launch at Brookfield Place in the heart of Toronto’s downtown business district, where cashiers process one customer transaction every eight seconds on average through a solid two hours of peak morning traffic. The store had already been retrofitted to accommodate heavy foot traffic, with six cash registers and three roped off rows with stanchions to organize a winding lineup that can run to 50 or more people during peak times.
Starbucks was at the forefront of mass market food customization and personalization in the coffee business, a practice that has been added to many fast-food counters — from upstarts like Chipotle to most recently last week, McDonald’s Canada and its burgers. But waiting is an inevitable consequence of specialized ordering, particularly when it comes to complex orders along the lines of a triple-grande-soy-milk-extra-hot latte.
“It’s long been an issue at Starbucks that, depending on what you order, you have to stand around and wait for it to be made,” said Ed Strapagiel, a Toronto-based retailing consultant. “I don’t know that this will add any new customers, but it will please the already-committed Starbucks customer coming back to Starbucks if it is able to save them many minutes of time. But it is a new way to for Starbucks to make its existing customers feel special and maybe to keep them from going elsewhere, like McDonald’s, when there is a long line.”
Starbucks executives are confident the new app capabilities will improve business even more, given the amount of sales lost when customers eyeball a lineup and decide they do not have enough time to wait to place and pick up an order.
“We have all experienced an occasion where we don’t think we have the time to wait in the lineup,” said Mills. “Our customers are saying it. Not a weekend goes by where I don’t get a Sunday morning brunch tweet saying ‘I just wish Starbucks would deliver.’ Customers are telling us they want convenience, and mobile order and pay is just that next step in the innovation chain.”
The app geolocates customers to give them the closest Starbucks outlets, including estimated walking or driving time.
Adam Brotman, chief digital officer at Starbucks Corp., said the average wait time on app advance orders is three to five minutes. The program started rolling out in the U.S. beginning last December and recently launched in the U.K. “This benefits everybody — you have time savings and convenience for customers, even those who aren’t using the feature,” because there should be fewer customers standing in order lineups at the cash register. Customers who use the app pick their orders up directly from baristas at the pickup counter.
The service will be rolled out to 300 cafes in the Toronto area next week, and throughout Canada during the next year. The Starbucks app already has more than one million Canadian users, and mobile payments currently account for 18 per cent of the chain’s transactions.
Starbucks has been trying to innovate in foodservice under pressure from McDonald’s Canada, which has vastly improved its coffee offerings in recent years. Starbucks Canada has also revamped its menu, launching a lineup of new sandwich options last month, and plans to debut new salad bowls next week.
The order-in-advance option is being eyed by Tim Hortons, where two years ago executives began talking about strategies like menu simplification to shorten long lineups at the cash and at drive through windows. Canada’s largest coffee chain allows customers to pay using their mobile loyalty app at the cash, but has not implemented an order-in-advance capability.
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