Cool insight, thanks for that.

How long (on average) does a delivery take once you pickup the processed order from Starbucks? Have you guys measured any significant differences in temperature?

It really depends on the order distribution of distances for a specific store but on average its ~7 minutes from pickup to dropoff. Regarding difference in temperature, the coffee travels in insulated bags and so we aren't seeing significant differences. We are monitoring customer satisfaction scores on these orders and will tweak as we go along as we find opportunities.

I don't get how this was such a last-minute, all-nighters-all-round thing. Would it really have been so bad to take 4 weeks and do it properly?

I don't think one more week would have made that much of a difference (rather than, say, a couple of months). Seems like they came up with a solid solution anyway.

This is complete speculation, but I'm guessing that the Starbucks deal happened late (as does any deal between higher executives that don't have to implement it), and the dealmakers wanted it running as soon as possible.

Actually, Postmates & Starbucks have been working on this partnership for a while now. We began operationally testing this in the last couple of months. As with all tests, there were kinks that needed to be worked out and new problems to be solved. Transporting coffee, spill-proof, at scale was one of those.

How much did these trays cost?

We were optimizing for speed so didn't really shoot for optimizing costs as much. It cost us about $6.61 in material costs and $5.25 in laser cutting time.

First world problems

Feels like it should be 5 five cups, with another one in the center. Unless you know you need to keep them a fixed distance from the perimeter.

More complicated to manufacture.