Starbucks Partners With Meituan to Expand Delivery Services

Starbucks China on Tuesday announced a new cooperation agreement with Meituan, a domestic food delivery platform giant. As part of the arrangement, Starbucks will launch an exclusive events initiative called “1971 salons” alongside Meituan, allowing customers to order coffee delivery via the super-app’s digital platform. In addition, Starbucks took the lead in enabling Meituan‘s “Super Store,” leading the way in realizing online and offline integration.

The “1971 salons” are the first exclusive event service launched by Starbucks China. Customers can book parts of Starbucks stores for private events, ranging from birthday parties to business meetings, through the Meituan app and or the firm’s subsidiary app Dianping.

The new service will be first launched in more than 60 stores across the cities of Beijing, Shanghai, Shenzhen and Chengdu, and more Starbucks stores in China in the future are planned to eventually be covered.

With the continuous expansion to more and more stores, Starbucks will explore the potential of “1971 salons.” More activities including coffee series courses and community activities are already under planning. In the future, the existing coffee courses, birthday parties, pet parties, sign language courses and other daily activities in Starbucks stores can also be published and managed through the salons to better serve the community where the stores are located.

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In addition, the order delivery service has also been launched in the Meituan app. When there are many nearby stores, the brand page will appear first in a search list, and stores with “sufficient goods,” “fastest delivery” and “selected series” will be recommended. In addition, Meituan is also equipped with an exclusive distribution team for Starbucks’ delivery service.

Meituan also applied its innovative online product called the “Super Store” to Starbucks for the first time. This is a customized product created by Meituan based on the service, experience, operation and marketing features of different restaurant chain brand stores.

Through the mode of “center deployment + differentiated operation of local stores,” the unique features of stores, such as different designs, featured products, star baristas, activity schedules and customer communities, will be completely presented on Starbucks’ “Super Store,” and the connection between stores, regular customers and communities will be extended online.