Father Xing's takeout is finally online! Starbucks and ele.me officially launched "special star delivery"

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Forty-eight days after Ali and Starbucks announced their strategic partnership, Star Dad's takeout finally came online. During the trial run, some areas of Beijing and Shanghai can drink take-out Starbucks through Starbucks'"special star delivery".

Unlike some Starbucks purchasing agents on takeout platforms in the past, this service can be counted as a comprehensive upgrade: ele.me developed a brand new ice pack for Starbucks, and laboratory tests show that the temperature in the box can be kept at a low temperature of 5 degrees within 6 hours. Not only that, but in order for you to drink coffee faster, Ele.me 's hummingbird distribution has created an exclusive distribution team for Starbucks, and a special test team of 20 people has been closed for more than three months before the service is launched.

From then on, ▲ will wait for coffee with the takeout boy.

But it's not just takeout.

"if we just add a simple food delivery to the traditional offline stores, we think this form of transformation is superficial or even unsuccessful." Ele.me CEO Wang Lei said.

In the future, through the payment system from Taobao, Alipay, ele.me, box horse, word of mouth or Starbucks' own App, it will not only attract consumers, but also bring more experience precipitation and data accumulation. In the end, the two companies can take what they need and make key changes to their own operation, warehouse allocation, membership and other systems.

If Starbucks were a novel, this might be the time for sleeping lions to wake up.

Takeout is a necessary way of development.

Chinese mainland entered the Starbucks market in January 1999 and opened its first store in the International Trade Center in Beijing. So far, Starbucks has more than 3400 stores. China is currently Starbucks' largest market outside the United States. Shanghai has become the city with the largest number of Starbucks stores in the world.

▲, so "the largest Starbucks in the world" is also opened in Shanghai.

Earlier, at Starbucks' 2018 global investor exchange, Starbucks unveiled a growth plan for the mainland market over five fiscal years: opening more stores in core investment areas. and increase the number of new stores in the Chinese market to 600 a year. According to the plan, Starbucks will have 6000 stores in China by September 2022.

It is not impossible. KFC has more than 5000 stores in mainland China. Starbucks' performance also shows that its belief in investing in the Chinese market has paid off. Third-quarter results showed that Starbucks' sales grew by 17%, and customer conversion rates were also increasing.

But there is no denying the fact that Starbucks has more competitors. Not only local brands such as Luckin Coffee, Lian Coffee and Seesaw, but also coffee players such as McCoffee and convenience store coffee, as well as local tea brands represented by a little bit and COCO are also competing with this coffee giant for traffic.

The result of ▲ Baidu map search "Coffee"

The cooperation with Ali is not a decision to pat the forehead. In fact, Starbucks has been trying to take out for a long time. When deciding to cooperate with Ali, Starbucks' requirements are simple but complex: they want to make customers feel the experience and service of Starbucks wherever they are, and accumulate the stars of Starbucks clubs. Experience is the lifeblood of Starbucks, and it is also the fundamental reason that restricts the brand's lack of early delivery service.

Experience is Starbucks' line of life and death.

At a time when the catering takeout market is gradually normalized and fixed, many merchants are paying attention to increasing experience from expansion. Now meals delivered through the takeout platform, from customized bags to how to make a good-looking plate in the lunch box, are being continuously optimized.

For Starbucks, they do not need the stage of "expansion". After all, there were countless purchasing agents before it went online. Even coffee, which now regards Starbucks as a competitor, started by purchasing Starbucks on its behalf.

But for Starbucks, the biggest problem is how to optimize the online experience so that people who order on their phones can get the same experience.

In fact, Starbucks was working on takeout a long time ago. Customers who order Starbucks now will see a different cup lid when they get the coffee. This is a patented cup lid with a circular arc reflux groove set up to discharge steam without letting the liquid flow out. It takes more than a year to study this cup lid alone. In addition, there are many precautions: the compartments in food packaging, the stickers on the packaging, the incomplete incisions of cold drinks. All the settings are added to allow takeout customers to have the same experience as in-store.

▲, pour the cup without spilling it.

▲ specializes in designing new cup lids.

It also took a while to plan the menu. After numerous debates and discussions within Starbucks, many familiar products did not appear on the takeout menu in the end. For example, cappuccino, this drink with milk foam is not suitable for takeout scenes, even if its order is high, but it is ultimately excluded.

Although only a few dozen products were finally launched, Starbucks' proudest order customization steps have been preserved.

When ordering, takeout customers can still customize the take-out interface just like ordering in the store. No matter it is cup type, concentration, espresso, milk type, syrup style, you can choose from the special star delivery. Starbucks has done statistics that lattes alone can be customized to 972 completely different options.

▲, so many options.

"fourth Space", which is the concept put forward by Starbucks. Starbucks' success has long been seen as not only providing coffee, but also the "third space" of a lifestyle-giving coffee new value. The proposal of the fourth space can be understood to mean that Starbucks hopes that when you are not in the store, it can also provide you with its way of life in some form.

This is a mutual help.

When Alibaba and Starbucks announced their cooperation, the announcement was worth pondering.

Starbucks and Alibaba have reached a new comprehensive retail strategic cooperation. The words new retail and strategic cooperation mean that this cooperation is not just about ele.me helping Starbucks deliver takeout. In fact, last year, Starbucks teamed up with Ali to launch a new retail wisdom store, Starbucks Zhenxuan Shanghai Bakery.

But it's more than that. In July this year, Wang Lei, CEO of ele.me, said that ele.me hopes to win more than half of the Chinese food and beverage takeout market in the short to medium term and plans to invest 3 billion yuan. In August, after joining the "big gift package" of Ali 88 members, the overall paid members of ele.me increased by more than 30%.

▲ Ali 88 members connect Ali ecology.

Ali can bring business to ele.me. In the future, Mobile Taobao and Alipay can provide traffic for ele.me, and these "necessary" programs can bring more traffic to ele.me. Jiang Fan, president of Taobao, also said before that all merchants on ele.me will enter Taobao's search and recommendation algorithm in the future, not just to give an entrance now.

And Ali's ability to deal with data can make ele.me become a profitable enterprise and a tool to help Ali transform at the same time.

Recently, for example, ele.me has begun to open up the membership systems of other brands-burger king and bar John are about to open up their membership systems with ele.me, and merchant coupons will be common to physical stores and takeout platforms for the first time. And the membership system of these brands, as well as the takeout business, can also feed Ali's new retail strategy, help various offline formats, including Box Horse, land on the ground, and finally better help Ali compete offline.

Starbucks has long been regarded as "not keeping up with the digital age". Whether it's mobile payment or takeout, it is one step behind other brands, but Starbucks' logic is: if the experience is not good enough, I'd rather not do it. At a time when growth is the truth, this spirit may be really ambitious.