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The days of sipping a latte for hours while hunched over a laptop at Starbucks may be on the way out. The Seattle-based java giant is investing in grab-and-go stores where consumers preorder and pay for their caffeine fixes via a mobile app. Starbucks was already seeing more consumers demand this kind of service prior …
The days of sipping a latte for hours while hunched over a laptop at Starbucks may be on the way out.
The Seattle-based java giant is investing in grab-and-go stores where consumers preorder and pay for their caffeine fixes via a mobile app.
Starbucks was already seeing more consumers demand this kind of service prior to the pandemic and had been planning to make the switch to more Starbucks pickup stores over the next three to five years.
In light of COVID-19, however, it’s fast-tracking that rollout, it said Wednesday.
The plan also calls for Starbucks to close up to 400 company-owned stores in the US and Canada as it invests in these new store formats over the next 18 months, the company revealed in a regulatory filing.
“Our vision is that each large city in the US will ultimately have a mix of traditional Starbucks cafés and Starbucks Pickup locations,” with the latter helping to “reduce crowding in our cafés,” Starbucks chief executive, Kevin Johnson said in the filing.
Even before the pandemic, Starbucks had found that 80 percent of its transactions in the US were “on-the-go” orders, the company said.
In New York City, Starbucks will be adding a second pickup-only store near Grand Central Terminal “in the near future,” the company said. There is already one at Penn Plaza by Penn Station and one in Toronto, Canada.
Most of the new locations will be within walking distance of an existing café, some of which may be reformatted to include a pickup-only cafe.
“The consumer is moving in this direction already,” restaurant analyst Mark Kalinowski of Kalinowski Equity Research told The Post. “These stores will save Starbucks on labor and real estate costs as well.”
Starbucks could sorely use those savings. The pandemic will cost it up to $2.3 billion in sales in the quarter ended June 28, the company said.
Starbucks’ shares slid by 4.1 percent, to $79.01, on Wednesday.
