In the Car Service Wars, Lyft Annexes Starbucks and Uber Captures Ice Cream

Which do you like better: ice cream or coffee? (I love both, but if I had to choose, it’s always going to be coffee.)

Our two major car service competitors have made their alliances clear: Uber has claimed ice cream as its personal territory, and Lyft has annexed Starbucks for fuel.

This week, Uber announced that on Friday, July 24 (that is to say, tomorrow) they’re running their fourth annual #UberIceCream promotion. Hail an Uber on your phone, type in “ICE CREAM,” and a car will arrive with five frozen treats inside, all for you.

That’s right: five ice creams. For you and that family of four you’ve got hiding in the background. Certainly not for you to eat two of them right away and then put the other three in the freezer while telling yourself you’ll stretch them out over the next three days.

Or maybe you’ll be the cool person who calls an Uber to your office and brings back five ice cream treats to slowly melt on the office kitchen counter, the outer edges softening along with everybody’s willpower.

(I recently listened to an episode of Gretchen Rubin’s podcast Happier where Rubin and her sister discuss how having snacks in the office means they have to devote a small percentage of their brainpower/willpower to continuously choosing not to eat those snacks. Because you can’t choose just once; you have to make that choice when you first walk by the kitchen at 9 a.m., again when you get up to use the facilities around 10:30, again when you walk back from your meeting, and so on.)

Those five ice creams will set you back $25, by the way, unless you choose to link your Capital One card as an Uber payment method. I have a Capital One card, but I don’t plan on linking it to Uber just so I can get five ice creams that I don’t even get to pick out myself. What if one of them turns out to be something weird, like butter pecan? Or peach? Ice cream is not meant to taste like fruit, it’s meant to taste like chocolate with cookie dough, brownies, and fudge-covered peanut butter pretzels mixed in.

Lyft, meanwhile, has annexed Starbucks as its personal territory. The day after I got Uber’s #UberIceCream email, I got one from Lyft announcing Lyft x Starbucks.

It looks like Lyft did some kind of soft launch last month, letting Lyft drivers bring passengers eight free Starbucks iced coffees (seriously, two would have been plenty), but now they’ve gone in a different direction. Instead of claiming five things of ice cream (or eight coffees) for yourself, you can use Lyft x Starbucks to buy your Lyft driver a cup of delicious Starbucks coffee. Doesn’t that make Lyft seem like the socially responsible choice? Don’t you feel kind of obligated to buy your driver coffee now?

Lyft x Starbucks is also launching a program to provide Starbucks baristas free Lyft rides to and from work, which actually sounds like a pretty cool deal. In case you were worried that there wasn’t going to be anything in it for you, Starbucks will now let you redeem Lyft Stars for Starbucks coffee and snacks. No, I don’t know what that means yet, but I’m pretty sure Lyft will explain soon enough. (And then Uber will follow up by announcing that you can use Uber Dots for free Dippin’ Dots, or something.)

In other Lyft and Uber news, both rideshare services were recently granted access to pick up passengers at LAX provided they follow some specific rules. To quote the LA Times:

The regulations would require Uber and Lyft to link their mobile apps with a digital “geofence” that would alert the airport when a driver entered the terminal area, dropped someone off, picked someone up and left again. The proposed system, similar to one in place at San Francisco International Airport, would also record some basic data on drivers.

[…]

The permits would require Uber and Lyft to pay $4 for each drop-off and $4 for each pickup. In both cases, the fee, collected by the airport agency and added to its general operating revenue, would probably be passed on to the passenger. The ride-hailing companies would be required to pay the airport at least $25,000 per month for the right to pick up at LAX.

I guess Uber would consider that the equivalent of 5,000 things of ice cream.

Photo credit: Ryosuke Yagi

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