Forget long lines — coffee can soon be delivered to your door.
Starbucks CEO Howard Schultz said in an earnings call that the coffee chain will start delivering its food and drinks toward the end of the year.
Schultz aims to improve “customer loyalty and engagement by extending express order and pay to include food and beverage delivery, yes, food and beverage delivery in select markets,” he said, according to a transcript of the call.
Starbucks has not announced the first cities for the delivery service, but if it reaches Gainesville, Maude’s Classic Café employee Chelsea Collison does not see it as a threat.
Collison, a 26-year-old UF alumna, has worked as a barista for two years.
“I don’t think a delivery service would really affect our business so much,” Collison said. “We have a lot of people who have met here and this becomes their meeting place. I think human interaction is pretty important, not just money in exchange for goods.”
Gainesville is no stranger to coffee delivery. Two former UF students, Marcus Calpakis, 21, an economics and information systems double major, and Spencer Muratides, 23, a real estate graduate student, founded GoJoe in 2014. Although no longer in business, GoJoe was a coffee delivery service.
GoJoe’s concept was very similar to the Starbucks delivery model — students placed orders via a mobile app, provided their credit card information and their location appeared with a pin, Calpakis said.
“I think it will be a success for them, it’s a cult product so people who already order Starbucks will use the delivery too,” he said.
[A version of this story ran on page 9 on 2/4/2015 under the headline “Starbucks to incorporate delivery option by year’s end"]
