Starbucks drive-thru drives up success

Dubai

Starbucks has introduced drive-thru facilities at their Jumeirah Beach Road three weeks ago. According to Starbucks in-store manager Jay Rivera, this is the first time in Dubai that the popular coffee outlet sets up a drive-thru. Sales to drive-thru customers, who now make up 55 per cent of the total base, have accounted for 60 per cent of total sales in the three weeks since the service was started on the Jumeirah Beach Road (JBR), said Rivera.

“We are doing better than the other branches in Dubai,” Rivera said. Starbucks has generated 30 per cent more sales than other Starbucks branches in Dubai, said the manager. The store has so far achieved 150 per cent of expected sales thanks to the drive-thru feature.

The success of the drive-thru is owed to its convenience, said Abdullah Mohammad, a drive-thru customer Gulf News talked to at the site. “It’s convenient for me when I want to get coffee on my way to work,” said Mohammad.

According to the manager, the drive-thru is less time-consuming for customers who can now expect to wait only five minutes for a coffee, instead of the 10 to 15 minutes it usually takes for in-store orders.

The drive-thru concept in Dubai for coffee is a novel idea and it seems Starbucks has reaped the rewards for applying it first.

Abdul Wahid Afennas of Euromonitor International says “Drive-thrus are an extension of services and do result in an increase in sales.” Afennas also mentioned that global and domestic companies often use Dubai as a test market for new service concepts. In the US Starbucks already uses dirve-thrus in servicing customers. “Location is important as it improves convenience,” Afennas said.

More Starbucks outlets in Dubai would probably be equipped to receive drive-thru customers eventually. At JBR’s outlet, while repeat customers have made the drive-thru a success, many other customers sill are not aware of it because it is not visibly located.

Sarah Algethami is a trainee at Gulf News.