No matter how much you rely on your morning caffeine fix, no matter how delicious that afternoon Frappuccino pick-me-up is, no matter how undeniably easy a run to one of Starbucks' ubiquitous locations can be, you have to admit: Things can get a little chaotic inside the coffee chain's stores, especially during daily rushes. The Starbucks app offers helpful solutions, like being able to order ahead, but sometimes the mix of people waiting for app orders and people placing orders on-site can complicate things even more. Well, ever in pursuit of evolving convenience, the company just may have a solution.
This Tuesday, Starbucks will open its first "Starbucks Pickup" location in New York City at Penn Plaza, which makes a lot of sense for that commuter traffic. Crazily enough, there's never been a Starbucks store like this in the United States (the brand has opened similar stores in China).
The idea is that the store's primary focus is serving customers who order ahead on the app. To be clear, customers can order from a barista in the store, CNN Business reports, but it's not encouraged; baristas will help customers download and learn to navigate the app. Basically, everything about this location is geared toward encouraging patrons to pick what they want and pay ahead of time, so that operations in the store are just a series of streamlined pick-ups.
This store will be about 1,000 square feet, a little more than half the average Starbucks location size, per CNN. It will be sleeker and more brightly lit, and it won't have seating or food cases out on display. You can still order food, but again, the goal is for customers to be doing that on the app before getting to the store. There will also be a large digital board keeping customers updated on the status of their orders.
Starbucks' Vice President of Urban Markets Kathryn Young told CNN that the location is designed to be "predictable and effortless," a solution for everyone's busy schedules. The version rolled out in China, Starbucks Now, has seen successful results. With all of us juggling crazy work hours, families, social lives and errands, it stands to reason that such a pared-down, sped-up Starbucks experience would do well here in the States, too.
If this location leads to more popping up across the country, it will no doubt boost download numbers for the Starbucks app, which CNN says has already risen 15 percent over the past year to 17.6 million users. Another issue these pick-up-only (or, pick-up-preferred) stores could help is Starbucks’ tendency to cannibalize itself, meaning that when locations open too close together, they steal each others' customers. By mixing locations up between standard and pick-up, the customer base would depend more on who wants what: a Starbucks to work in for the afternoon, or a Starbucks to breeze through in order to bring a latte to the office, pronto.