Espresso delivery
Do people really want coffee delivered to their door?
Coffee deliveries: they are literally on the way.
Starbucks has announced that it’s teaming up with Uber Eats to offer thirsty consumers their direct coffee fix, straight to their door.
Is this the next logical disruptive step in meeting the needs of our consumer culture — or a step too far that no-one really wants? Our UK users, or bees, told us what they thought.
Fair trade?
Starbucks can relax: there is a potential market for delivery coffee — as long as it gets the details right.
Over 1 in 2 of our bees — 54% — said they’d likely consider ordering a coffee for delivery, with only 16% saying they’d ‘never’ do so.
There’s a clear generational split, with people under-35 more likely to consider the idea (57%) than those older (45%). But the other clear split in attitudes isn’t age-related — it’s to do with the drink itself.
Of course, coffees that require frothy milk to make are harder to create at home without expensive specialist equipment, and our findings show that it’s people who prefer those kind of drinks who’d be keenest on the service.
In fact, those who prefer a frothy coffee — like a flat white, macchiato, latte or cappuccino — were more likely to consider delivery (61%) than any other demographic.
“If I want to treat my friends or colleagues to a high quality hot drink, this would be an amazing option!” said a 21-year-old female who prefers macchiatos.
Whereas for a 23-year-old black coffee-drinking male: “I can make coffee myself in less time than it would take to order one. It’d be too costly and time-consuming for the quality of the coffee.”
Better latte than never?
So we have a great idea of who would be interested in this service. But how good would it taste?
To be honest, our bees aren’t completely sure. While 1 in 3 said they expected delivery coffee to be just as good as in a shop, 1 in 4 said it wouldn’t, and the rest simply didn’t know.
Curiously, it was our younger bees who were more likely to feel the taste of delivery coffee would suffer: 1 in 3 (34%) of 18–25s thought delivery coffee wouldn’t taste as good as shop-bought, against only 24% of over 35s. (Or in other words, the very demographic keenest on trying delivery coffee is the one that doesn’t think it’ll be as good.)
And what do they worry about? Well, there’s several big concerns held by a wide cross-section of bees — that the drink will have got cold, or been spilled, or even tampered with along the way. In fact, over 8 in 10 said that the drink would need to arrive within 20 minutes to be worthwhile ordering.
One 30-year-old female bee said: “I’m worried it would be cold, spilled or in my case all mixed up. I like a caramel latte with cream on the top — but the cream would be all mixed in by the time it got to me.”
Meanwhile, the environment also factors in, with over half of our bees saying they would worry about what the effect would be of people starting to get their coffees delivered.
“It’s ridiculous!” said a 36-year-old woman. “It’s extravagant, lazy, and really bad environmentally!”
Clearly, these are the concerns that Starbucks and others must overcome to make delivery coffee first-class. But there’s also another factor they’ll need to consider…
Bean counting
Of course, delivering coffees costs money — but that’s not especially appealing to our bees. Over 7 in 10 (71%) say that a delivery fee would put them off ordering, with only 15% saying it wouldn’t — and the concept is even less appealing to younger audiences.
And what would be the maximum amount they’d pay? Well here our bees had free range to choose any amount — but there was a clear consensus: almost half of our bees said that £1 would be the most they’d spend on getting a coffee delivered, while 1 in 5 would only be willing to pay 50p. (However, there is also a minority of those super keen on a delivery coffee fix — about 16% of our bees — who would stretch to £2.)
That’s not a lot. So what’s the secret to making this work from a cost perspective?
Well, the answer might be to team up with other providers. A stunning 8 out of 10 of our users say they’d be more likely to get coffee delivered if they were ordering it alongside something else.
So for Starbucks and Uber Eats, there’s a clear way to provide delivery coffee to the Average Joe — make sure it’s hot, that consumers’ fears over quality are dealt with, and offer other options too in terms of what is on offer.
Otherwise, there could be a lot of crying over spilt milk…
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A quick word on our methodology: The figures in the article are taken from Streetbees community members in the UK, carried out in Jan 2019. All of the data was collected by mobile and web surveys, and is accurate to within 3 percentage points 19 times out of 20.
