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Target Corporation (NYSE:TGT) said on Wednesday that it will expand its Drive Up program with Starbucks (SBUX) after a successful pilot program over the last few months.
Drive Up with Starbucks is rolling out to Target’s more than 1,700 stores with both a Starbucks Café and Drive Up service by early October. The initiative provides Target customers with the option to have Starbucks handcrafted beverages and food delivered along with the rest of their Drive Up order straight to their cars. Target (TGT) was noted to be the first retailer to offer the service at scale.
Target (TGT) said it began building the Drive Up with Starbucks app functionality in late 2021 after guests overwhelmingly requested the feature. “We piloted the service with team members at select stores, using their feedback throughout our test-and-learn approach to fine-tune Drive Up with Starbucks for this initial launch to our guests,” noted the retailer. The Minneapolis-based retailer said the Drive Up with Starbucks national rollout comes on the heels of another recent enhancement to the Drive Up service – the ability to make a product return free of charge. Returns with Drive Up launched at Target stores across the U.S. this summer.
Target (TGT) is due to report Q2 earnings on August 16. While there has been a recent uptick in discretionary unit sales into the key back-to-school, back-to-college, and holiday periods, sales growth for the quarter is expected to be soft due to consumer headwinds such as inflation and student repayments. In addition some geographic regions saw an estimated 1.5% decline in store traffic during the quarter that was attributable to social media boycotts, while promotional activity clipped e-commerce traffic by an estimated 3%. 25 of the last 29 EPS revisions on TGT have been on the downward side as analysts have been prepping for some Q2 headaches.
Shares of Target (TGT) gained 0.36% in morning action on Wednesday
