Starbucks to expand mobile ordering to all of NW

SEATTLE – Imagine getting your Starbucks fix at rush hour without a long line – and your name on that to-go cup always properly spelled.

That could happen starting Tuesday, as the coffee giant brings its mobile-ordering and payment system, currently piloted in Portland, to the rest of the Pacific Northwest.

Starbucks is rolling out the mobile-ordering capability to draw more customers into a digital ecosystem that’s closely entwined with its rewards program, whose users tend to buy more and more often.

People who have downloaded the Starbucks app into their Apple device will be able to place an order and pay from their iPhone or iPad, then walk into one of more than 650 Starbucks stores in Washington, Oregon, Alaska and Idaho to see their latte waiting for them at the handout counter. An Android version of the mobile ordering feature is expected later this year.

The mobile ordering initiative is part of the company’s ambitious growth targets, aiming to double its revenue to $30 billion by 2019. Wall Street is counting on the company to deliver; at $93.04, shares on Tuesday were trading near their all-time high.

The mobile ordering feature also gives the company a tool to manage strong demand for its increasingly complex offerings, which has created waiting lines that are becoming frustrating to many customers.

Starbucks won’t give specific figures on how the pilot in Portland, launched last December, has worked.

But Chief Digital Officer Adam Brotman said it has exceeded “all of our own expectations” in terms of efficiency and customer satisfaction.

Some Portlanders say they like it. “I get to skip the line,” said Rebekah Hubbard, an interactive-marketing manager at Provenance Hotels, a Portland-based developer and manager of boutique hotels. She said she orders from the light-rail train on the way to work.

When she gets to the Starbucks in her building, Hubbard said, her coffee is waiting.

Starbucks is not the first food retailer to come up with a mobile ordering app. Taco Bell launched one in October; mobile ordering apps are also widely used by pizza chains.

Starbucks aims to roll out mobile ordering in the stores it owns beyond the Pacific Northwest later this year, Brotman added.

Licensed stores – those operated by partners such as hotels and supermarkets – are not part of the mobile-ordering program yet, but the company says it’s figuring out ways to include them.