Starbucks Delivery’s Massive Expansion: Get Your Mobile Payments Tools Ready

Well, it likely won’t come as a surprise to most—maybe not to anyone—that the 11-market test run that Starbucks staged of delivery services went well. In fact, it went so well that the company’s COO, Roz Brewer, referred to it as “effortless” in a press release. With such a successful test run under its belt, it’s equally not surprising that news emerged saying the delivery program was about to get a serious leg up.

Now, reports note, an agreement has been reached with Uber Eats that will bring Starbucks delivery to everywhere that Uber Eats service. Additionally, the two firms are poised to collaborate on a range of functions, including technology integration, delivery packaging, in-store operations, and speeding up the order-to-door delivery window. Starbucks expects to go fully national with its delivery capability by early 2020.

Roz Brewer also noted “We are driven to create new and unique digital experiences that are meaningful, valuable and convenient for our customers. Partnering with Uber Eats helps us take another step towards bringing Starbucks to customers wherever they are.”

Of course, this doesn’t mean completely national rollout, but rather, only national to wherever Uber Eats goes. That still leaves quite a few Podunks and similar places in the lurch, as is commonly the case. This also isn’t the drone delivery system we’d been hoping for, in which our coffees are slung underneath the fuselages of drone aircraft, which fly our Starbucks to the front lawn and drop it off. Still, it’s a step in the right direction, offering access to a service that plenty of people want anyway. Of course, with live people delivering food, the use of drones quickly becomes a jobs issue, and that could be a serious problem in its own right.

While this isn’t everything we might have hoped it would be, we’re certainly moving toward that future. And perhaps we may have found a way to split the difference in terms of jobs; drones can deliver to where cars weren’t delivering anyway. Thanks to moves like this, it’s entirely possible that, one day, we’ll be able to use our mobile payments systems of choice to pay for food and have it brought directly to our homes, regardless of where the food—or our homes—are.