You’ll soon be able to have a Slurpee delivered to your door.
Convenience store chain 7-Eleven has partnered with delivery startup Postmates so that customers can order snacks, sodas, and toothbrushes online and have them dropped off at their homes, Coins2Day has learned.
The deal is an effort by 7-Eleven to better capitalize on the rise of delivery services, an emerging niche of companies that serve as personal shoppers for customers who prefer to avoid visiting a store. People can have nearly anything they want delivered to them within a few hours, in many cases, for no more than a nominal fee on top of the regular retail price.
Postmates, a Silicon Valley upstart, lets customers order products from a wide variety of restaurants through its app and have them shuttled to wherever they are. More recently, Postmates has been partnering with big retailers and food chains including McDonalds, Starbucks and Chipotle, to make the process more efficient.
The 7-Eleven deal marks one the Postmates’s first deals outside of the food and drink industry, said Holger Luedorf, head of business development for the startup. He said strong demand for deliveries from convenience stores and pharmacies has encouraged the company to push for partnerships that would formalize those relationships.
The delivery startup recently raised $80 million in new funding at a $400 million valuation, making it one of the new rising stars in the on-demand economy.
The deal with 7-Eleven also marks the first official delivery partnership for the convenience store chain. Raja Doddala, vice president of omnichannel & ventures for the company, explained that delivery services like Postmates were already shopping at its stores on behalf of their customers, particularly for its chain’s trademark Slurpees as well as items like medicine.
Most of 7-Eleven’s household products, prepared food, and medicines will be available within the Postmates app at regular store prices. But alcohol will be unavailable.
The partnership has already launched in San Francisco and Oakland. Plans are to expand to Austin, New York City, Los Angeles, Washington DC and Chicago in the coming months.
Average delivery times prior to the deal’s announcement averaged around 30 minutes.
Doddala said that 7-Eleven’s agreement is not exclusive to Postmates and that the retailer is exploring other deals with on-demand economy companies. Details about the agreement with Postmates were not released.
“We’ve never experimented with delivery before,” said Doddala. “But people are requesting it, and we are going to explore more ways to work with on-demand companies.”