Readers of a certain age will remember the Starbucks scene in 1998's You've Got Mail, a 38-second diatribe on the "defining sense of self" one gets from ordering from an impossible array of short-tall-dark-caf-decaf, etc. For a few buckaroos, you gain a semblance of decision-making ownership with that tall decaf cappuccino. Ah, consumerism.
If only the lines were shorter, did you say?
Seems like someone heard you. Earlier this week, the on-demand, S.F.-based delivery service Postmates announced a collaboration with Starbucks to enable "customers to order their favorite Starbucks products and have it delivered to them without leaving their home or office." Yes, soon, you'll be able to order that grande soy latte without idly waiting in line, pretending to diligently check your work email when you're actually stalking the ex-boyfriend on Instagram.
Beginning later this year, customers in Seattle (with other cities to follow) can place their order through the Starbucks mobile app using the expanded "Order Ahead" feature; the order is then distributed to a nearby café for Postmates to pick up and deliver right to your door. Think of all those exploited interns who are cheering right now.
While takeout/delivery service is nothing new, it is new for the coffee market. And, in an age when we're prizing specialty coffee roasters like Blue Bottle or Stumptown, it gives the habitual, if slightly humdrum, mainstay an e-commerce edge over younger competition. It also helps ease the recent blunder that was the Starbucks "Race Together" initiative.
This news is making us pretty happy, but is it weird to say that we'll miss all the hilarious misspelled names?
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