Close Ad

The Spoon

Daily news and analysis about the food tech revolution

coffee delivery

GOffee Equity Crowdfunds $1.07M Dollars for Office Coffee Delivery (With Reusable Cup!)

GOffee, a NYC-based B2B coffee delivery company, announced today via press release that it has raised $1.07 million dollars in equity crowdfunding via its StartEngine campaign. This brings GOffee’s total amount of funding raised to $1.17 million.

GOffee works with corporate customers to provide a coffee or tea drink delivery service directly to workers’ desks. An employee places their order (GOffee features 24 different brands of coffee) via web or mobile app. GOffee’s baristas make the drink (flat white, Americano, cappuccino, etc.) and it’s poured into a reusable travel mug (no paper cups). The next day GOffee picks up the mugs for cleaning and re-use.

The company says this beats existing coffee delivery in a few ways. First, unlike getting Starbucks via Uber Eats, GOffee is running the whole stack: Taking the order, making the drink and doing the delivery. So there isn’t a lot of “down” time where the coffee sits waiting for a pickup. Second, because it is packaged in a travel mug, the drink is much easier to transport (no wrapping in plastic wrap). And because the mugs are reusable, there’s much less waste.

The question for GOffee is whether companies will pony to help their employees get their morning fix. GOffee offers plans ranging from $499 – $2,000 a month for drink delivery, depending on the number of employees. In its press release, GOffee says that a company with 30 employees would pay $799 a month, which covers the cost of the drinks and delivery.

It might actually be worth it to save on minutes lost when people leave the building for (or are late to work getting) a morning brew. GOffee listed 11 corporate customers in its press release, all of which are in the company’s delivery zone of the Garment District/Times Square in New York City. With the new funds, the company plans to expand delivery across Manhattan in 2020.

GOffee is actually the second startup we’ve written about in as many weeks that has turned to StartEngine to equity crowdfund. Last week GoSun (noticing a GO trend here), which makes solar ovens, launched its own crowdfunding campaign.

There are other reusable coffee cup programs out there from startups like CupClub and Vessel Works, but GOffee appears to be the first to target companies and offer delivery and to incorporate reusable mugs into people’s everyday routine. Perhaps this crowdfunding will give GOffee enough of a cash jolt to attract larger, more institutional funding.

UPDATE: An earlier version of this post said that GOffee’s monthly fee only covered delivery. It actually includes the price of the drinks as well.

Starbucks’ New Express Store Concept in China Focuses on Delivery, Pickup Orders

Starbucks unveiled its first-ever “express retail” concept store, located Beijing, China and aimed at further streamlining the delivery and pickup process for customers and drivers.

According to a press release, the new “Starbucks Now” retail store “seamlessly integrates Starbucks physical and digital customer touchpoints.” Its minimalist design features very limited seating and a secure in-wall pickup system with “pickup portals” associated with each order. Delivery drivers or customers who order via the Starbucks mobile app can retrieve their orders from those portals.

The store will keep one or two baristas on the floor to greet customers and assist them with ordering. The location will also serve as a central hub for fulfilling delivery orders for nearby stores within a certain radius, thereby shifting the burden of the extra orders away from those more traditional locations.

The move follows efforts earlier this year from Starbucks to expand its delivery program across China, an initiative that also included opening ghost kitchens for fulfilling more delivery orders. More important, the Starbucks Now store is also clearly aimed at competing with its newly public rival Luckin. The latter focuses on a store model that’s largely around on-the-go orders, with 91.3 percent of those locations “pick-up stores” that offer very limited seating.

Starbucks said it plans to open more of these express stores in high-traffic areas in China, especially targeting business and transit hubs. No word yet on if we’ll see similar stores hit the U.S. at any point in the near future.

The Coffee Bean & Tea Leaf Partners With Postmates for Delivery

Today, The Coffee Bean & Tea Leaf announced and kicked off an exclusive delivery partnership with Postmates at 180 company-owned Coffee Bean & Tea Leaf locations across California and Arizona. According to a press announcement, additional locations around the U.S. are planned “in the coming weeks.”

Delivery fees on orders start at $1.99. For customers of Postmates Unlimited, the company’s subscription service, the delivery fee is waived on orders over $15.

Southern California-based Coffee Bean & Tea Leaf joins a growing list of coffee retailers now delivering, usually via third-party services.

Starbucks already operates a delivery program via Uber Eats in certain U.S. markets. If you prefer the McCafe brand for your early-morning coffee needs, McDonald’s will deliver one through Uber Eats (though it recently bailed on its exclusivity contract with the service). Dunkin’, meanwhile, has been testing delivery since 2015.

Coffee has always been a bit of a tricky delivery item, largely because it’s historically been a hot, highly spill-able beverage. As one writer noted back in 2016, “Time and temperature seem to be the two biggest obstacles [to delivery] in repeating the experiences consumers have come to expect within the brick-and-mortar retail locations.”

Those were the days when ordering coffee for delivery meant getting a tepid drink wrapped three times over in cellophane. But times are changing. More and more tech around delivery operations and logistics has entered the restaurant industry over the last few years, as have business models like ghost kitchens, which typically only service delivery and could therefore speed up order fulfillment times. Starbucks, in fact, just announced it is testing ghost kitchens in China that could improve quality and timeliness on orders.

Plus, according to the National Coffee Association’s latest report, so-called non-traditional beverages like blended drinks, cold brew, and nitro coffee are on the rise, thanks to a higher demand for personalization and specialization from younger customers. Many (though not all) of these beverages are better suited to car trips than the old-fashioned cup of joe.

As drinks like these become more popular, and as technology gets cheaper and easier for restaurants to implement and the industry continues to innovate on packaging, tepid coffee in a paper cup could soon become a thing of the past.