By Xie Fang
U.S coffee brand the Starbucks Corporation announced Thursday that it would cooperate with the Chinese e-commerce giant, Alibaba, to launch its coffee delivery service in China, the People’s Daily Online reported Friday morning.
As part of the agreement between the two companies, Starbucks plans to draw on Alibaba’s food delivery subsidiary, Ele.me, to pilot the service in around 150 Starbucks shops located in several business districts in Beijing and Shanghai starting in mid-September. It will then expand the service to more than 2,000 Starbucks shops in over 30 Chinese cities by the end of this year.
“This forward-looking cooperation with Alibaba will reshape the landscape of the modern retailing industry,” said Kevin Johnson, president and CEO of Starbuck. “The cooperation also marks a new milestone in our effort to beat the expectation of Chinese consumers.”
Zhang Yong, CEO of Alibaba, also spoke highly of the cooperation, saying that “we expect the interaction between Alibaba’s advantages in retailing and data technologies and Starbucks to produce a desirable ‘chemical effect’ which will set an excellent example for the global retail industry. ”
According to Wang Lei, president of Ele.me, the platform will put together a dedicated delivery team to make sure that consumers can receive their Starbuck’s coffee as soon as possible. “The only thing that a consumer has to do is to place the order,” said Wang. “We will deal with the rest of the work.”
Apart from Ele.me, Starbucks will also enhance its delivery capacity by setting up special kitchens named “Star kitchen for Delivery” in the stores of Freshhema, Alibaba’s brick-and-mortar supermarket chain. The kitchen is expected to be available in some of Freshhema stores in Shanghai and Hangzhou as soon as this September.
