“Starbucks said it has begun rolling out its Starbucks Now mobile ordering platform to 300 select stores in Beijing and Shanghai and will expand the service throughout China over the next year.
Starbucks Now, available for Starbucks Rewards members through the company’s mobile app in China, allows customers to order their food and beverages ahead of time and pick them up in store.
“Starbucks Now represents a significant opportunity for Starbucks China to drive new, innovative customer experiences,” Belinda Wong, chief executive officer of Starbucks China said in a company release. “This builds on the latest of several digital initiatives in China, including Starbucks Delivers and locally relevant gifting and e-commerce experiences.”
Customers can use Starbucks Now to find a local store based on the mobile app’s GPS location, order food and customized beverages and make payment, with the order ready to pick up when they arrive at the location.”
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In the beverage world, there are few names bigger than Starbucks and Anheuser-Busch. The two dominate any discussion of coffee or beer respectively, but they’re now partnering up to help capture the market of a third beverage – tea. Specifically, Starbucks is looking to begin selling their Teavana line of teas as ready-to-drink specialty bottles in grocery stores around the world. They decided to partner with Anheuser Busch to handle the bottling aspect of the operation, and if spokespeople for both companies are to be believed, there is plenty of revenue to go around.
It’s getting a lot harder than it used to be to walk down a grocery store aisle and tell what will give you a buzz – at least at first glance. For starters, there’s the growing proliferation of alcoholic versions of sodas from childhood, like Not Your Father’s Root Beer, or Crabbie’s Ginger Beer. But the trend also moves the other direction, as more and more foods and beverages without alcohol draw on the flavor profiles of beer, liquor and cocktails.
Stressing the “humility and respect” with which they are undertaking this endeavor, Starbucks CEO Howard Schultz announced recently that in early 2017, Starbucks will finally open their first store in Italy. It may be surprising that such a store doesn’t exist already, especially since the Starbucks brand was born out of Schultz’s first trip to Milan 33 years ago, but the company is understandably cautious about bringing one of the largest chains in the world to a culture that prizes small-scale coffee operations and exquisite attention to detail.
Over the past five years, Starbucks has been implementing plans to sell wine, craft beer and small plates. While Starbucks is already an international hub for coffee, they are expanding into a larger scale of beverages. This week, 24 new locations will enact in the “Starbucks Evenings” program. Starbucks locations in Brooklyn, Denver, Miami, Orlando, Northern California, Washington, Oregon, Los Angeles, Chicago, Florida and Atlanta have been secured liquor licenses and are the initiatives to this new program.
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