Starbucks Delivery Service Resale Questions

[maddisonlake]

My corporation is looking at investing into a Starbucks,Dunkin' Donuts etc. Coffee delivery service, as in we will pick up your coffee at starbucks and deliver it directly to you office or door.

Our company lawyer whom is an entertainment lawyer cannot quite give me a definite answer to why this is completely legal. We would be charging customers the price of the coffee which includes the sales tax charged by SBX and we would charge a delivery fee per cup.

Would this be considered illegally reselling a product in which we do not own?

Thanks in advance!

 

[racer72]

Would this be considered illegally reselling a product in which we do not own?

No. The problem you have reselling food items is product liability. If someone consumes one of the products you deliver and suffers an illness do to the product, who do they sue, you or the retailer? If you get sued, you will claim it came from the retailer. If the retailer gets sued, they will claim you did something to their product. That is the reason retailers of food products do not allow third party delivery of their products. Consider this too, if there was money to be made delivering such products, would you not think the retailers would be doing it themselves? You can ask the retailers for permission but don't be suprised if they say no.

 

[FlyingRon]

My corporation is looking at investing into a Starbucks,Dunkin' Donuts etc. Coffee delivery service, as in we will pick up your coffee at starbucks and deliver it directly to you office or door.\

What part of legality are you worried about. First off, there exist such business. We have one here called the Takeout Taxi and I've seen others in other areas of the country. They essentially contract with the restaurants to provide delivery service and co-market the deliver menus.

Of course, you probably have any number of local business issues especially since it's involving food that you need more specialized assistance than an "Entertainment Lawyer."

One hitch I can think of is if you don't have a relationship with the restaurant they can make things sticky for using their trademarks and menus. However, nothing legally stops you from reselling their food (outside of health department issues).

 

[maddisonlake]

Thank You!

Thank you for your prompt responses, they are greatly appreciated.

I actually know several owners of companies here in Florida that delivers restaurant food to people, in their case it was easy getting started given that the restaurants they are delivering are franchised and/or are mom and pops. They simply just called up the owner and asked the question.

I have been searching for weeks to see if someone replicated a Coffee Delivery service but no one has come close.

On a side note Starbuck's has mentioned in a press conference of last year that it would take a huge logistical triumph to pull off delivery on over 15K stores. I am wanting to start this off very small.

*For the health liability, I suppose the only way to get around that is to have customers sign a waiver? lol. I grew up with my parents owning restaurants and health liability was always a factor, however, we had good General Liability Insurance (which we never used).