For coffee delivery, Starbucks will use Postmates in Seattle and baristas in New York City
Today is a big day for us at Postmates. Fred Wilson / AVC : Same Day/Same Hour Delivery Jason Del Rey / Re/code : Starbucks Delivery Is Real and It's Coming to Seattle and the Empire State Building Katie Benner / Bloomberg View : Benner on Tech: Is Facebook a Sexist Workplace? Rachel Lerman / bizjournals : Starbucks and S.F. startup to launch delivery service Lisa Baertlein / Reuters : Starbucks to debut delivery in Manhattan, Seattle this year Kevin Roose / Fusion : Good news, lazy caffeine addicts: Starbucks is testing out a delivery service Mike Wehner / The Daily Dot : Postmates is about to start testing a Starbucks delivery service Christina Warren / Mashable : Starbucks and Postmates partner to bring coffee delivery to your door Article Injector / The Seattle Times : Starbucks to test delivery service this year in Seattle, New York Kyle Russell / TechCrunch : Postmates Will Deliver Starbucks, Starting In Seattle Craig Giammona / Bloomberg Business : Empire State Building Picked to Test Starbucks Delivery in NYC Jessica Conditt / Engadget : Starbucks delivery rolls out in US cities this year Associated Press : Starbucks delivery to start in Seattle, New York City Amanda Connolly / The Next Web : Starbucks and Postmates team up for new on-demand delivery service
Context & Ripple Effects
In March 2015 Starbucks committed to bringing coffee delivery to Seattle and Manhattan within the year, splitting the test between two very different workforces: Postmates couriers in its hometown market, and its own baristas on foot in New York City. The announcement landed just months before mobile ordering rolled out across the U.S., which supplied the order-ahead plumbing any delivery service would need.
The bet resolved quickly: by December, Postmates had launched the Seattle pilot with sub-hour delivery for a $5.99 fee on iOS only. What makes this story worth revisiting is how the dual-model experiment aged — three years later Starbucks handed delivery at a quarter of U.S. stores to UberEats, and by 2021 it was pairing with Amazon Go for checkout-free pickup in Manhattan.
First-order effects
- Seattle customers get Postmates couriers while New York customers get Starbucks employees delivering — two logistics models running head-to-head in the same program, letting Starbucks compare cost and quality directly.
- Postmates lands a marquee national brand as a delivery client, immediately validating its business-to-consumer courier model beyond restaurant food.
Second-order effects
- Once the barista-delivery test proved expensive relative to third-party couriers, the door opened for dedicated platforms: UberEats took over delivery from a quarter of U.S. stores by 2019, displacing the in-house approach.
- Mobile ordering's nationwide rollout became the dependency every subsequent format — Postmates, UberEats, Amazon Go pickup — built on, turning Starbucks' app into distribution infrastructure rather than a payments novelty.
Third-order effects
- Starbucks' delivery channel converged on rented logistics: partner couriers for delivery, partner technology for the store itself, with the coffee chain supplying brand and product rather than owning the last mile.
- The churn through partners suggests delivery contracts in food retail are commodity capacity that chains re-bid as platforms scale — no single courier owns the relationship, and format experiments (courier, employee, pickup) persist in parallel.
The trend: Quick-service chains are progressively outsourcing the last mile — from employee-delivered pilots to interchangeable courier platforms and automated pickup — as mobile ordering turns stores into fulfillment nodes.