Starbucks Eyes China Expansion With Meituan Partnership

Starbucks has partnered with Chinese delivery platform, Meituan, to expand delivery services in the country — its second-largest market outside of the U.S.

Customers ordering through the Meituan app will have the ability to customize their orders and still participate in the company’s Starbucks Rewards program. Additionally, they will be able to order Starbucks’ premium Reserve coffee, which until now was not available in the Chinese market.

The company also plans to unlock access to a host of offline features for Meituan’s 667 million active users, such as booking private events at select stores and signing up for activities and events organized by local stores. Currently, the services are accessible at 60 store locations in Beijing, Chengdu, Shanghai and Shenzhen. Starbucks plans to expand these services to other cities in the near future.

By the end of 2022, each of the company’s 5,000 stores in the country will have a unique page on the Meituan app, where users will be able to order coffee and check out upcoming local events and activities.

Starbucks’ decision to partner with Meituan comes at a time when the coffee giant is seeing growing competition from local players such as HeyTea and Manner, which have both been raising significant amounts of money.

Originally published at https://retailbum.com on January 19, 2022.