• Skip to primary navigation
  • Skip to main content
  • Skip to primary sidebar
  • Skip to footer
  • Skip to navigation
Close Ad

The Spoon

Daily news and analysis about the food tech revolution

  • Home
  • Podcasts
  • Events
  • Newsletter
  • Connect
    • Custom Events
    • Slack
    • RSS
    • Send us a Tip
  • Advertise
  • Consulting
  • About
The Spoon
  • Home
  • Podcasts
  • Newsletter
  • Events
  • Advertise
  • About

Starbucks

July 24, 2019

Newsletter: The New All-in-One Restaurant Tech Is Here, Digital Drive-Thru Goes Down Under

This is the web version of our weekly newsletter. Sign up for it here to get all the best food tech news an analysis direct to your inbox!

I was in a local coffee shop recently and overheard a rep from a well-known POS company trying to sell his product to the shop’s manager. But for every feature he offered up (“It’ll manage payroll!” “It makes tipping easier!”), the cafe manager had more or less the same rebuttal: more tech would make more work for her staff.

I suspect this conversation is happening all over the world. Tech’s march on the restaurant industry is here to stay, but that doesn’t mean it’s necessarily making life easier for restaurants. In a growing number of cases, too many digital tools actually make it harder to get work done, particularly as demands for delivery and mobile orders ramp up and those functions have to be integrated into an already chaotic workflow.

But this week, we got a different glimpse into the future of the digital restaurant — namely, one where disparate tech solutions are replaced by a single digital platform that can manage every corner of the restaurant, from the kitchen system in the back to the kiosk out front to the off-premises order on its way out for delivery.

At least, that’s what Brightloom hopes to launch to restaurants this fall. The newly rebranded company, formerly known as Eatsa, announced yesterday that it’s revamped its existing end-to-end restaurant tech platform, into which it’s also integrating Starbucks’ famed mobile technology.

This is a big deal because, while many products claim to be “all-in-one” restaurant management software packs that make it easier for restaurant owners and operators to manage the entire business, no one’s yet managed to seamlessly integrate the mobile aspect of business into their system.

And nobody does mobile like Starbucks. Love ‘em or hate ‘em, it’s hard to deny the mega-chain’s dominance when it comes to offering fast, highly personalized order and pickup functions for customers. Brightloom’s soon-to-be-unveiled system will integrate the Starbucks mobile order, pay, and customer loyalty tech into its own system. We don’t yet know exactly what that will look like, but it will undoubtedly raise everyone’s standards around what restaurant-tech systems should be able to do and put pressure on others to make their offerings just as useful and less of a burden for restaurants to implement.

Good-bye, Crackly Speakerphone. Hello Digital Drive-Thru
Will all these digital developments render the crackly speaker at the drive-thru null and void? Probably, and sooner than we think.

While major QSRs like Dunkin’ and Starbucks have been implementing digital and mobile ordering into the drive-thru experience little by little over the last couple years, KFC took things a step further recently by announcing its first-ever drive-thru-only concept store.

The store, which is slated to open in November, will feature multiple drive-thru lanes dedicated to customers who have ordered their food via the KFC website or mobile app. The idea is to streamline the order process and cut down on how long it takes customers — or delivery drivers — to get their food. But again, it’s all about the implementation. KFC’s concept store could raise the bar on what QSRs are expected to deliver in terms of speed and quality. Or it could just be introducing another digital process that stresses workers out. We’ll know more when the pilot launches in November, in Australia.

Delivery Bots on the Rise
Or you could just let the restaurant come to you in the form of a roving bot. There’s a growing number of these devices delivering food from restaurant to customer, often on college campuses, which hold a lot of people in a relatively small geographic area.

But as my colleague Chris Albrecht pointed out this week, Kiwi announced it will test its semi-autonomous delivery bots on the streets of Sacramento, CA this fall, which suggests we’re coming to a point where these li’l roving machines will start to become a more common sight on regular city sidewalks. Who needs drive-thru when you can have your meal brought to you by a cute little box on wheels? As Chris said, “it was pretty amazing to whip out my phone, order a burrito, have a robot fetch my lunch and bring it to my location.”

For now, roving delivery bots are probably not a priority for most restaurants’ overall digital solutions. But as all-in-one offerings like the Brightloom-Starbucks tech get more commonplace and digital ordering becomes routine for customers and workers alike, there may be room for most restaurants to accommodate a bot or two in their tech stack.

July 23, 2019

Starbucks and Uber Eats to Roll Out Delivery Nationwide

Lazy latte drinkers around the country can rejoice as Starbucks announced today that it is expanding its “preferred” delivery partnership with Uber Eats, which will be available throughout the U.S. by early 2020. Starbucks said the nationwide rollout comes following an eleven-market trial in cities like Miami, Seattle and New York proved successful.

It’s only Tuesday and already it has been a busy week for both Starbucks and Uber’s corporate communications departments. The news that has been both announced and broken have been chock-a-block with tidbits that point to potential futures of both companies.

Let’s start with Starbucks, and this little nugget from today’s press release:

Through the agreement, the companies will collaborate on innovation and technology integration. Starbucks and Uber Eats will continue to focus on delivery packaging, in-store operations, and a quick order-to-door delivery window. (emphasis ours)

This is the second technology integration announcement from the coffee giant in as many days. Yesterday, Starbucks announced that as part of its investment in Brightloom (formerly eatsa), Brightloom will integrate some aspects of Starbucks’ tech stack. As my colleague, Jenn Marston wrote:

Starbucks said it has granted Brightloom a software license that allows the latter to “select components of Starbucks proprietary digital flywheel software.” In other words, Brightloom will integrate features from Starbucks’ customer engagement platform like its mobile order and pay system, loyalty program, and personalization features. Basically all the stuff that makes Starbucks customers continue to use the mobile app.

Starbucks is becoming more like Amazon, which built up its own cloud infrastructure before spinning it off for others to use as Amazon Web Services. Will we see a similar Starbucks-as-a-Service? There are certainly enough retailers who would kill for a world-class mobile customer engagement platform, and if they could lease it like AWS, that could provide a whole new side biz for the ‘bucks.

But the week has also been interesting for Uber Eats. Yesterday, TechCrunch revealed that Uber is testing out a monthly subscription service in San Francisco and Chicago. For $24.99 a month, customers get a fixed discount on rides, free rentals of Jump bikes and scooters, and free delivery through Uber Eats.

It’s a smart play by Uber to keep people (and their data) on its platform. Why go to DoorDash when you can get discounted rides and free food delivery through Uber? Becoming the “preferred” delivery partner for Starbucks only sweetens that appeal. Especially for those lazy latte drinkers.

July 16, 2019

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.

June 17, 2019

Dunkin’ Is Testing Delivery, Geofencing in New York City

Dunkin’ announced this morning it is now available for delivery in all five boroughs of New York City.

Dunkin’ is already in select cities in the U.S. through partnerships with Grubhub as well as DoorDash. For the NYC test market, Dunkin’ will be available exclusively through Grubhub and Seamless (Grubhub’s NYC-specific brand).

Grubhub isn’t a surprising choice here. In major urban areas — like NYC, LA, Philadephia, Boston, Chicago, and Washington, D.C. — the company is still the leader of third-party delivery when it comes to market share.

For the Dunkin’-NYC partnership, Grubhub will integrate orders directly into each store location’s POS system, a feature that’s getting more and more important with each new delivery partnership that surfaces.

But Grubhub didn’t stop there in terms of using technology to enhance the Dunkin’ deal. It also drew a geofence around each Dunkin’ location in NYC (there are over 400) in order to monitor traffic in surrounding areas and where couriers are in relation to the store making their order.

Seth Priebatsch, the head of enterprise at Grubhub, referred to this as “our ‘just in time delivery flow’” when he spoke to NRN this morning. Thanks to the technology, Dunkin’ will start a delivery order based on how far away the courier is and how large the order is. For bigger orders, Dunkin’ starts making an them when the courier is 10 minutes away; for smaller orders, the store will probably need just a few minutes to time an order with a courier’s arrival.

This geofencing method is something we’ll see more of as restaurant chains look to improve both timeliness and quality of their delivery orders. And Dunkin’ isn’t the first — McDonald’s already uses it, and Burger King pulled a well-publicized geofencing stunt late last year that wound up highlighting the value of the technology when it comes to attracting and retaining customers.

Packaging is the other aspect of the Dunkin’-Grubhub deal that bears noting. Grubhub said all couriers are equipped with insulated bags with which to deliver drinks, whether hot or cold. But it seems time and temperature are still the two major hurdles when it comes to coffee delivery, even for a chain as large as Dunkin’ (or, for that matter, Starbucks and Uber Eats). Even Priebatsch noted that Dunkin’ is currently trying to walk the line between serving a large delivery radius without making travelers go so far that the quality of the product gets diminished in the process.

While there was no news of Grubhub using anything beyond the standard insulated bag, packaging seems an areas ripe for disruption in food delivery, especially as as more and more goods like hot coffee and frozen smoothies go mobile.

June 12, 2019

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.

Dunkin Donuts

May 8, 2019

Dunkin’ Is Taking Its Next-Generation Store to Texas and Beyond

Dunkin’ announced today a sizable expansion for 50 new locations outside the Northeast, the chain’s home region and where it’s historically held stores. The expansions will include elements of the chain’s next-generation store, which caters to mobile ordering, more modern design, and more espresso drinks.

In a press release, Dunkin’ said the new locations are part of an ongoing plan to open 200 to 250 new restaurants each year over the next three years. For this round, the company will head to Texas, Michigan, Southern Kentucky, Minnesota, Wisconsin, North Carolina, Nevada, and Missouri.

Notably, many of the planned expansions are with longtime franchisee groups. Even more notable is that with these deals, Dunkin’ will offer “flexible concepts for any real estate format,” according to the press release. Given that one-size-fits-all store redesign formats has been a point of friction for other restaurants (hello, McDonald’s), this flexibility could be a more rewarding way to go about expanding and redesigning.

Dunkin’s already made it clear to the world it’s trying to compete with other coffee-beverage brands (Starbucks, McDonald’s) with its next-gen concept store, which it launched at the beginning of 2018 in its hometown of Quincy, MA. The store, which has since made its way to other areas in the North, offers dedicated drive-thru lanes for mobile orders, on-tap (coffee) beverages, and delivery options with third-party companies like Grubhub.

Grant Benson, CFE, senior vice president of franchising and business development, indicated in the press release that new locations will offer those features, and that Dunkin plans to “capitalize on the momentum we experienced in 2018.”

That momentum is evident: same-store sales at Dunkin’ were up 2.4 percent in the first quarter of 2019, and CEO David Hoffman said this was the largest quarterly same-store sales gain in four years. He also noted it was the result of “technology advancements” (and espresso drinks).

Dunkin’ isn’t a totally foreign presence outside the Northeast; outposts like Dunkin’ Express are becoming more and more common at places like highway truck stops. But those are basically drip coffee and donut stations within an existing convenience store, and would only go so far when competing with the likes of Starbucks or McDonald’s. Expanding not just full-service locations but features of its next-generation concept would help give Dunkin’ a greater presence coast to coast, something it’s going to need if it wants to stay relevant.

What would really up the competition would be for Dunkin’ to adopt an AI strategy like the one McDonald’s just did when it acquired Dynamic Yield. While there’s no indication that such a deal is in the works, or even if AI is going to be that much of a competitive differentiator, it doesn’t seem out of the realm of possibilities as Dunkin’s next move.

April 22, 2019

Yelp Has a New Initiative to Help Reduce Plastic Waste in Restaurants

Yelp gave a nod to Earth Day this morning by launching a new initiative that rates restaurants’ eco-friendliness factor.

With Yelp’s Green Practices initiative, Yelp reviewers can answer questions around a restaurant’s takeout packaging — whether the business offers compostable containers, uses plastic bags, or has discounts for things like bringing your own reusable beverage mug. The interface to do so looks and functions much like any other Yelp rating tool:

According to a blog post by Yelp product manager Jason Purdy, Yelp will use the information from the surveys “to better understand restaurant behaviors across the country and inform how we surface information about restaurant sustainability for consumers.”

Single-use plastics are just the start. Purdy noted in the same blog post that Yelp is working with a number of different partners to gather and present information about multiple sustainability issues, including the State of California Air Resource Board, the City of Los Angeles Green Business Program, and Clean Water Action’s ReThink Disposable program.

Purdy’s post also said Yelp will eliminate single-use plastic cups, plates, and utensils from all U.S. offices by the end of 2019.

Reducing packaging waste is a huge topic in the restaurant industry right now, with an ever-growing number of businesses announcing various moves to tackle their reliance on single-use plastic. Starbucks announced last year it would eliminate single-use plastic straws from its 28,000 locations by 2020. McDonald’s is trying to find a more sustainable hot/cold cup. KFC has said it will convert to renewable plastic sources by 2025.

Beyond businesses, the EU vowed it will ban single-use plastics by 2021. Stateside, Seattle became the first major U.S. city to ban single-use plastics, in 2018; California and Washington, D.C. NYC currently has legislation in place to enact a similar ban.

To be honest, there are probably enough initiatives in place at this point to fill a 1,500-word post. The question is whether they’ll have enough of an effect on consumer behavior to change our relationship with single-use plastics in restaurants. To be sure, programs like Yelp’s will get people thinking more about how much waste gets created just by getting a to-go order. Now it’s a matter of using these types of initiatives to get consumers beyond thinking and into action.

April 16, 2019

Starbucks Will Power More Than 300 Texas Stores With Solar

Starbucks made another move towards investing in green energy today when it announced a partnership with solar company Cypress Creek Renewables. In a post on the coffee giant’s Stories site, Starbucks noted that the two companies, along with U.S. bank, are “teaming up on a portfolio of farms across Texas.” The partnership includes two solar farms that will power 360 Starbucks stores across Houston, Dallas, Fort Worth, Plano, and Arlington.

The post also noted that Starbucks is investing in six other Cypress-owned solar farms in Texas, and predicts that the eight total farms will reduce the company’s total carbon footprint by 101,000 tons annually.

The Seattle-based coffee retailer isn’t new to solar initiatives. In April 2017, Starbucks invested in NC-47, solar farm in North Carolina to power around 600 Starbucks locations in that state as well as Delaware, Kentucky, Maryland, Virginia, West Virginia, and Washington, D.C. In September of 2018, Starbucks announced its Greener Stores initiative, which, among other things, aims to power all stores with 100 percent renewable energy by 2025. That includes solar as well as wind — in November of 2018, the company invested in an Illinois wind farm to power almost 350 of its locations.

Starbucks isn’t alone, either, in its plans to ramp up the sustainable side of business, for which the year 2025 is shaping up to be the key date for big-name quick-service brands. Wendy’s has its Squarely Sustainable program, which so far has included using more energy-efficient kitchen equipment and HVAC systems. The company also plans to reduce its overall energy usage by 20 percent by 2025. KFC will convert its packaging to renewable plastic sources, also by 2025. Meanwhile, McDonald’s has said it will source 100 percent of its packaging from renewable materials by, yep, 2025, and Dunkin’ has said it will do away with polystyrene cups by next year.

What will become clearer in future is which of these areas will help quick-service chains make the most positive impact on sustainability. From the perspective of a consumer, it’s easier to see that impact in compostable coffee cups and cutlery as replacements for polystyrene and plastic. Renewables are trickier in that they are a) harder for customers to “see” and b) have a long way to go in meeting long-term climate and sustainability goals. However, that doesn’t make them any less important, and as we inch towards 2025, we’ll see more of these initiatives from more chains, both in the U.S. and globally.

March 20, 2019

Starbucks Invests $100M Into Food and Retail Startup Venture

Starbucks announced today it will invest $100 million in Valor Siren Ventures, a new venture fund from Valor Equity Partners. Valor Siren Ventures will serve as an incubator for food and retail tech startups. According to a press release, the investment is the first of its kind for Starbucks.

The incubator will focus on companies developing technologies and products related to food and retail. Valor Equity Partners counts Eatsa, Fooda, and Wow Bao among its portfolio companies, which is to say it’s had its hands in foodtech for some time now. (Side note: Valor was also an early-stage investor in Tesla.)

In addition to the investment from Starbucks, the new fund will, according to the press release, seek an additional $300 million “in the coming months” from other partners. Specific companies for the incubator have not yet been named, nor did the press release specify what areas of foodtech the new fund will support. Based on what’s already in Valor’s portfolio, however, those areas could range from data analytics to managing cryptocurrency to providing front- and back-of-house systems for restaurants. Valor also has a few investments in clean energy, a sector Starbucks is involved with through its Greener Stores initiative. Starbucks also just announced it is trialing greener packaging in select locations, so I wouldn’t be surprised to see a company related to that pop up in the new incubator.

The investment in the Valor fund will give Starbucks access to new tech that could potentially be used for both food and retail aspects of Starbucks stores. Starbucks said in the release it will explore commercial partnerships with companies from the new incubator, with CEO Kevin Johnson adding, “We believe that innovative ideas are fuel for the future, and we continue to build on this heritage inside our company across beverage, experiential retail, and our digital flywheel.”

Starbucks is one more name on a growing list of food and beverage brands investing in young companies via incubators and accelerators. Land O’ Lakes, Tyson Foods, and Chobani are among the major CPGs looking to inject their companies with some startup blood. Coca-Cola has its Venturing and Emerging Brands (VEB) program, as does Chipotle.

March 8, 2019

Hold Your Bitcoins. Starbucks Isn’t Taking Crypto for Coffee Just Yet

Last summer, Starbucks announced an investment in a company called Bakkt, an open-source platform that enables the buying, selling, and spending of cryptocurrencies. That was pretty much the extent of the news — until now. This week, crypto publication The Block reported that Starbucks had secured “a sizable equity cut” in Bakkt and will be “heavily involved in developing the card and app that will allow it to serve as Bakkt’s first merchant-on-platform.” (Starbucks has no cash investment in Bakkt, and specific financials of the deal were not disclosed.)

But hang on to your Bitcoins, folks: the news doesn’t mean Starbucks will start directly taking crypto for lattes. Bakkt’s software is built to act as the middleman between merchant and cryptocurrency, which means Starbucks customers would have to download Bakkt’s software and use their digital currencies through that. Starbucks, in turn, would swap the cryptocurrency it receives for fiat, or currency the government deems legal but is not backed by a physical commodity. So crypto enthusiasts’ dreams of unseating capitalism will not be realized with this deal.

Taking the point of view of Starbucks, though, working with an intermediary makes sense. Cryptocurrency is a bearish market right now, with Bitcoin dropping 80 percent since its buying spree started in 2017. As we wrote last August, “the reality is that Bitcoin and others remain highly volatile in terms of price, which is one of the biggest reasons more retailers haven’t adopted them as forms of payment.” There are also numerous regulatory and financial risks involved with crypto, so not directly accepting it is simply safer. There is also the question of whether something like Bitcoin could even handle a percentage of the volume of Starbucks’ transactions in real time.

Still, it does put the coffee retailer at the forefront of a trend that, despite a bearish market, is going to generate more not less action in the coming years. As Starbucks told the Hard Fork: “We anticipate that a range of cryptocurrencies will gain traction with customers and, through our work with Bakkt, we will be uniquely positioned to constantly consider and offer customers new and unique ways to pay seamlessly, at Starbucks. As we continue to move forward with this work, we anticipate we’ll have more to share in the coming months.”

A handful of retailers out there currently take crypto. Overstock.com is basically a crypto company now. Shopify stores accepts it, as do NewEgg and Microsoft. The latter makes sense, as Microsoft powers the cloud infrastructure behind Bakkt.

We’re still a long ways off from digital currencies being part of the daily routine at the coffee shop, grocery store, or drive-thru. Starbucks’ involvement in the space is significant, but we’ll have to wait for more developments before we can legitmately get excited about the possibilities of crypto for lattes.

March 1, 2019

Analyst: Starbucks Could be the First Major Chain to Launch CBD-Infused Drinks (Eventually)

Cannabidiol (CBD) — the non-hallucinogenic ingredient in cannabis meant to promote relaxation — could be headed to your neighborhood Starbucks.

Well, eventually. This week financial services company Cowen released a report predicting the CBD market could be worth $16 billion by 2025. More interestingly, it hinted that Starbuck’s could be one of the first major chains to offer cannabidiol-infused drinks.

In the report, Cowen analyst Andrew Charles noted that Starbuck’s probably wouldn’t adopt CBD in the “near term,” which makes sense since no major chain will put it on their menu until the FDA gives its stamp of approval. However, he went on to write that, should the regulation of CBD change, “we could envision Starbucks ultimately piloting the ingredient.”

That’s pretty theoretical language. Starbuck’s hasn’t made any indication that it’s actually exploring cannabis-infused beverages. In an interview with CNBC, Starbucks CEO Kevin Johnson stated that Starbucks was aware of the edible/drinkable cannabis trend, though it didn’t have any immediate plans to pilot any drinks with THC or CBD.

It seems like the Cowen report called out Starbuck’s less because of any concrete hint from the company and more to illustrate a future in which CBD is so mainstream, it’s available somewhere as ubiquitous as Starbuck’s.

However, it will likely be a while yet before that’s the case. Though CBD-infused beverages have been popping up at local coffee shops and bodegas for some time, the chemical hasn’t been approved as “food-safe” by the FDA (despite its becoming legal with the passage of the Farm Bill in 2018).

Up until recently most CBD edibles sellers have been operating under the radar with little to no consequences. However, last month New York City health inspectors cracked down and put a citywide embargo on selling food or drink infused with CBD. The ban was recently delayed until this summer.

The FDA likely won’t approve CBD as food-safe by then, and some see the NYC crackdown as a bellwether for more restrictions on the sale of cannabidiol-infused food and drinks. But that doesn’t negate the fact that demand for the non-hallucinogenic ingredient is on the rise, thanks in part to celebrity endorsements and the recent “wellness” movement.

We’ve written before that despite all the buzz surrounding CBD beverages, it’ll likely be a while before it’s ready for the mainstream.

February 8, 2019

The Dunkin’-Grubhub Delivery Deal Is Great News for Consumers, Bad News for Starbucks

Dunkin’, the chain formerly known as Dunkin’ Donuts, announced today it will begin testing a delivery program with Grubhub in select cities, NRN reports.

The delivery rollout follows a year of moves by the Quincy, Massachusetts-based chain to shed its former image as a donut chain and compete with premium coffee retailers, namely Starbucks. In January 2018, Dunkin’ unveiled its “Next Gen” store, which offers a more modern design as well as a dedicated drive-thru lane for customers placing mobile orders. Dunkin’ made itself available for order via Alexa in 2018, too. And the chain dropped “Donuts” from its name, doubling down on its efforts to focus the brand on beverages and not on its signature treat, frowned upon by nutritionists everywhere nowadays. (Fun fact: Dunkin’ Donuts is largely responsible for changing our spelling of the word from “doughnut” to “donut.”)

The chain also did a massive product relaunch of its espresso, reformulating the recipe and proclaiming their espresso, in the words of CMO Tony Weisman, “is so good, you don’t have to go to Starbucks.”

The Grubhub deal is non-exclusive, as Dunkin’ also partners with DoorDash and will continue to do so.

But as delivery continues to become the norm rather than the exception, there may well be fewer folks who want to go to Starbucks anyway. The Seattle coffee giant expanded its Uber Eats delivery program in January in San Francisco, and will continue rolling it out to major U.S. cities over the next several months. It’s also worth noting that Starbucks has significantly more locations nationwide, though Dunkin’ is slowly but surely expanding out of its New England home turf.

Delivery may well become the ultimate battleground for these two companies. Post espresso relaunch, Dunkin’ is, in my caffeine-riddled opinion, on par with Starbucks in terms of quality (and better sometimes). Starbucks has nicer interiors, but Dunkin’ has better prices. Both offer things like streamlined drive-thrus and easy-to-use mobile apps. So whoever can master the most efficient, cost-effective way to deliver these premium drinks is likely the one who will come out on top, at least in the short term.

Dunkin’ hasn’t yet released information about which cities it will deliver in with Grubhub, or when that’s slated to begin. But one thing’s clear: Quincy and Seattle are in lockstep right now, and their race for dominance will only get more heated as 2019 goes on.

Previous
Next

Primary Sidebar

Footer

  • About
  • Sponsor the Spoon
  • The Spoon Events
  • Spoon Plus

© 2016–2025 The Spoon. All rights reserved.

  • Facebook
  • Instagram
  • LinkedIn
  • RSS
  • Twitter
  • YouTube
 

Loading Comments...