Starbucks to Trawl for College Students With Food Trucks

10 years, 2 months ago - 1 September 2014, Autoblog

The old joke about Starbucks is that there are so many of the coffee shops across America that in some places you can sit in one location sipping a pumpkin spice latte and actually be able see another one of its stores across the street.

If you think the brand is everywhere now, it's going to be truly ubiquitous at three universities this fall with a pilot program that has food trucks serving coffee to caffeine-starved students and faculty.

According to BusinessWeek, Starbucks has about 11,500 stores in USA, but the company wants to increase its presence on college campuses. Therefore, it's launching this pilot program to see how things work by using trucks. They're already following herds of students at Arizona State University and James Madison University in Virginia, and Coastal Carolina University in South Carolina gets its coffee-delivery vehicle on September 18.

The true genius behind this plan is that the trucks aren't just going to sit in one place all day. Instead, they are moving around throughout the day to give students their first fix in the morning and be right there in the afternoon to top off their cups. Starbucks is even promising to adjust the trucks' hours as needed on each campus to suit customers, even staying open later than the dining halls in some cases. The company clearly knows once you get people hooked; they are going to keep coming back for more.