When it comes to its hourly workers,
But there has been one nut Starbucks couldn't crack: how to get its employees to work when they didn't have access to good public transportation.
This is a problem that, perhaps not-so-coincidentally, is related to the struggles its hourly workers have with a work schedule that is always in flux. This issue is hardly limited to Starbucks; many hourly and low-wage workers have transportation issues. The difference in this case is that Starbucks seems to think it should be doing something about it.
Free Rides From Lyft
What Starbucks did is turn to ride-sharing company Lyft. According to the Lyft blog: [W]e're announcing a program that will provide Starbucks Baristas with free Lyft rides to and from work, when they need it most. We will be testing this program in the coming months.
Free rides! Even if it is only late at night or early in the morning, free transportation gives the worker that much more disposable income. It's a very nice perk, actually, for any income level below that of owning one's own helicopter.
More details were provided in USA Today. The pilot project would be "in a market with unreliable public transportation" (cue the jokes that that could be anywhere these days). Starbucks chief digital officer Adam Brotman told the paper that its managers had found that reliable transportation was a significant obstacle for workers in some markets, especially for employees who work early and late shifts.
Before your heart completely melts, though, later USA Today mentioned this:
Starbucks CEO Howard Schultz suggested that the partnership with Lyft could eventually evolve into one where drivers for the rideshare service deliver Starbucks food and beverages. The mobile order and pay system that is now in 4,000 stores and doing very, very well is going to be integrated into a delivery system," Schultz said. "Certainly, given Lyft's core business, the opportunity to integrate delivery with Lyft certainly exists.
Not that I blame Starbucks. Its partnership with Lyft has many synergies and this is one that looks particularly promising and should be explored.
An Argument You Can't Refuse
Besides, I suspect we will be hearing more about this concept of tapping ride-sharing companies such as Uber and Lyft for employee transportation.
Studies highlighted by Uber in a press release a few days ago establish a clear link between transportation availability and reliability and economic opportunity.
The NYU Rudin Center on Transportation found that areas with limited access to transportation had the highest rates of unemployment and the lowest incomes. Separately, according to Harvard and UC Berkeley researchers, access to transportation for getting to work is highly correlated with upward mobility. Unfortunately, the Brookings Institution found that only one-quarter of low- and middle-skill jobs are accessible via public transit within 90 minutes.
The answer, Uber said, is … Uber (!) because of its "reliable and affordable option to the transportation ecosystem for low-income neighborhoods."
The company wanted an analysis to see how Uber’s service compares to taxi service in low-income neighborhoods. Researchers at BOTEC Analysis were asked to run an experiment studying Uber’s reliability and affordability in those neighborhoods in Los Angeles. From the release:
Study participants paired up across lower-income neighborhoods in Los Angeles and requested Uber and taxi trips simultaneously. The results show that, on average, UberX rides in those neighborhoods are less than half the price of taxis and arrive in less than half the time.
These findings confirm what we see in Uber’s data in other cities around the United States: that the service is affordable and reliable across the whole of a city. In New York City for example, 35% of all Uber pickups currently happen outside Manhattan, compared to just 6% by traditional yellow taxis.
For low-income workers, this is, of course good news.
The study is also good news for Uber and Lyft, or to be more precise, the study is a great piece of data to lobby politicians and policy-makers with as they debate restrictions for these companies.
Somehow I think the pilot with the Starbucks employees is going to work out just fine. Lyft will make sure of it.
And if it gets that coffee-delivery gig as well, so much the better.
Also on Forbes:
