Starbucks’ Mobile Transactions Top 8 Million Weekly

Starbucks executives spent the past two quarters sharing stats about what makes the coffee company one of the top retailers when it comes to mobile transactions.

With its mobile order and pay app well underway from Portland to Seattle and across the Pacific Northwest, and delivery plans in place for Seattle and New York City, it’s clear to see that mobile and coffee are going to be Starbucks’ 2015 recipe for success. In the company’s fourth-quarter earnings call in January, CEO Howard Schultz said the company was seeing strong growth across its mobile platform, which was producing approximately 7 million mobile transactions a week.

And in its second-quarter earnings call yesterday (April 23), Starbucks announced it had reached the next millionth milestone: 8 million mobile transactions per week. Just to put that figure into context, that’s close to having every resident of New York City make a mobile transaction at Starbucks, once a week.

“Our experience today shows that mobile order and pay will drive significant increase in mobile transactions in stores throughout the U.S. Enhancing our in-store customer experience, with our digital experience — like mobile order and pay — creates a positive flywheel on our business, and attracts more Starbucks Rewards members,” Schultz said during the company’s earning call with analysts. “While mobile order and pay is setting every internal goal we set, we’re even more proud of the technology that’s making differences in our customers lives.”

Starbucks also saw record card redemption in Q2, along with a record number of card loads — which hit $1.1 billion for North America, which is a 19 percent increase, year over year. On its mobile app side, Starbucks has reached 16 million active users, and that may go up as mobile order and pay expands across the country — which it is expected to do by the end of 2015. In terms of its delivery rollout, Schultz also indicated that Starbucks will continue investigating which markets will be best to introduce the services.

“Starbucks’ record financial and operating performance in Q2 was driven by our people all around the world, yet woven together by one common thread – industry leading partner (employee) facing and customer facing innovation,” Schultz said in the company’s earnings release. “Innovation is the force that will continue to drive our business and enable us to expand and increase revenues and profits – always through the lens of humanity – long into the future.”

Overall, on the earnings side, Starbucks posted a net revenue increase of 18 percent, year over year, to a record $4.6 billion. Operating income was up 21 percent on the quarter to $778 million.