Starbucks launches a delivery service that brings coffee to your front door
Starbucks, the king of the coffee mainstream, is aiming for an upscale clientele with a new specialty coffee delivery service.
Barista Jay Rapp prepares a Chestnut Praline Latte at a Starbucks store in Seattle.
Ted S. Warren/AP
On Tuesday, Starbucks Corp. announced that it is going to launch a delivery service.
Before you get too excited, the delivery service is more for coffee connoisseurs than average Joes – at least for now.
The service will deliver an 8.8oz bag of Reserve coffee – Starbuck’s gourmet brand – to customers within three to five days of its being roasted at the Reserve Roastery and Tasting Room in Seattle. There are a variety of subscription options including a $24, one-month subscription, and $288, year-long subscription.
In the past few years, independent coffee roasters have cultivated cult-like followings of coffee drinkers who are interested in upscale brews and where and how their coffee is grown and roasted. Starbucks is trying to appeal to this market.
"Starbucks Reserve Roastery subscriptions are — aside from visiting the Roastery and having our partners scoop the coffee right in front of you — the freshest, fastest, and most innovative whole bean coffee experience in the marketplace," Starbucks CEO Howard Schultz said in a press release.
The company opened the Reserve Roastery in December 2014 and plans to open 100 specialty Starbucks stores that serve only Reserve coffee.
Additionally, as part of its digital initiative Starbucks is starting to allow customers to order as well as pay through its mobile app in select stores. Customers can choose a store and order on the app, and then pick up the order and pay when they get to the store, according to CNBC.
But for those who are more interested in having their brewed coffee come to them every morning, Starbucks is also planning to launch a beverage delivery service by the second half of 2015, according to the Wall Street Journal.
Starbucks is "finalizing plans for two distinct delivery models — one of which utilizes our own people, green-apron baristas, and the other, which leverages the capabilities of the third-party service,” Schultz told analysts last month, alluding to the Reserve and beverage-delivery services.