Tomer Molovinsky breaks down how Starbucks built a $1 billion business through its 2015 app, which hit 30 million active users. Smaller coffee shops can now copy that playbook using modern tools like Per Diem with Square integration to offer one-tap ordering, saved favorites, and faster checkout.
Starbucks growth Hack number two, launch your own mobile app. Back in 2015, Starbucks launched their app. Now they have 30 million active users, and it's really the preferred method for most of their customers. Back then, Starbucks was really the only coffee shop that could build their own app. They had the cash means to do it. They could build an engineering team in house. But today, Fast forward nearly 10 years and you can use services like per diem to build your own app. It perfectly integrates with Square. There's actually more capabilities in there than there are with the Starbucks app. First and foremost, this makes it just a lot easier and more convenient for your customers to order from you. Once you have an app, they don't need to log in every time. It's just one tap and they're in. It's right on their home screen, on their phone. And then once they're in, their favorites are there their recent orders. So two taps, that's in the checkout cart. It's a great opportunity, obviously, for you to upsell different things. And then I can just tap Apple Pay, or if I have, if I've loaded up store credit, it's literally one tap and boom, checked out. Now I'm going to get push notifications telling me once my cup of coffee is ready. So again, this is a tool that a lot of coffee shops are starting to take advantage of. It's one of the big advantages that Starbucks has had for many years. But now you can catch up and really take advantage of.
