Starbucks held its annual shareholders meeting yesterday, revealing its financial success 25 years after the Seattle-based coffee giant’s IPO. Starbucks spent time talking about its hiring plans in the future, new gluten free and vegan products and new tech and digital innovations, including voice ordering via Amazon’s Alexa in the car and voice mobile ordering.
The company announced back in January that it was creating a skill for Alexa and mobile voice or text ordering for the iPhone and Android apps. Today the voice and text ordering go live for the 100k+ customers who have the mobile app on their phones.
More interesting though is the partnership with Amazon and Ford to allow in-car ordering via Alexa. Amazon and Ford announced that Alexa would be integrated into Ford SYNC 3 technology at CES this year, allowing drivers to access the voice AI platform in any Ford vehicle with the upgraded smart tech.
Now, Amazon, Ford and Starbucks are working together to enable the Starbucks skill inside the SYNC 3 platform. A simple “Alexa, ask Starbucks to start my order” allows you to order coffee and have it ready when you arrive without ever picking up your smartphone. Using the mobile pay & order app, customers have to designate regular or favorite orders from which to select from and up to 10 local stores from where they’d like to pick-up. The SYNC 3 technology is inside most 2016 and newer model Ford vehicles.
As someone who struggled with trying to order her usual soy latte while leaving preschool dropoff (and just bought a Volkswagon), I am pretty envious.
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