Presto Mystery Shopper Assignment: 1000 Cups

March 9, 2016

From the creators of SASSIE comes Presto Insta-Shops, a new mystery shopping mobile app designed to make mystery shopping easier. To challenge our system, we love to send our shoppers out on fun international assignments. Our first mystery shopper assignment was in September of 2014, where we sent hundreds of mystery shoppers to their favorite coffee chain in order to find the best cup of coffee in America.

The Mystery Shopper Assignment:

We sent shoppers to some of the biggest coffee chains in the country including Starbucks, Dunkin Donuts, Tim Hortons, Caribou Coffee, The Coffee Bean & Tea Leaf, and Peet's Coffee. Their mission was to complete a short survey at 1000 different locations nationwide within 2 weeks. Our amazing Presto shoppers were able to complete all 1000 shops within only 2.5 days and they all received their payments within the same week!

Choosing Your Presto Mystery Shop:

Shoppers are allowed to choose their mystery shop through Prestomap.com which shows a list of mystery shops based off of their location. A Presto mystery shopper is given the ability to choose any Presto mystery shop in their area by self-assigning themselves to it. For the 1000 cups of coffee assignment, we required that the shopper must be nearby the shop in order to complete it. This allows shoppers to choose the most convenient shop for them based off of their location. We also set a time limit of 60 minutes to complete the shop once it was reserved, so if the shopper could not complete the shop, another shopper will be given the chance to. During this mystery shopper assignment, there was no need to go through a scheduler since Presto handles most of the assignment screening itself.

The Survey:

Over the years, we have heard many of our shoppers mention that they prefer shorter surveys with easier to answer questions. Our Presto surveys are short and easy to fill out from your phone as you're completing a mystery shop. Most of our questions required only one click to answer and could be completed in a matter of seconds! Some of the questions asked for this assignment included: What did you order? (Multiple Choice) Rate the quality of the SERVICE on this visit. (1-5) Would you return to this location? (1-5) To view all of the survey questions shoppers were asked to do for this assignment, click the image on the left.

The Reward:

In order to reward our shoppers for all of their hard work, we gave them a free cup of coffee! Since all of our Presto mystery shops were able to be reserved and completed on the go, our shoppers were able to enjoy their favorite cup of coffee on their way to work, on us. Presto also has the capability to pay our shoppers in only a few days, so with every Presto mystery shopping assignment that our shoppers complete, we make sure to send out payments as soon as possible. Each Presto shopper assignment will yield different rewards, so there will be something for everyone in the future!

The Results:

Quality:

After 1,621 cups of coffee were rated for QUALITY on a scale of 1-5 (5 being the highest quality), Caribou Coffee was the clear winner with a 4.72 rating. In last place was Dunkin’ Donuts with a 4.41 rating.

The Best Coffee Drinks in America:

Caribou takes the crown for Regular Coffee and Espresso-Based Beverages … but Coffee Bean makes the highest rated of all the drinks.

Coffee Drinks were classified with six different types: Regular Coffee, Espresso, Frozen, Flavored, Tea and Other. Surprisingly, the highest rated drink overall was Other (4.83) for Coffee Bean and Tea Leaf.

Caribou Coffee received the highest ratings for the Regular Coffee (4.77), Espresso Beverage (4.75), and Tea (4.72). Peet’s was rated the highest for Frozen Coffee (4.72) but the lowest for Tea (4.11) and other (4.33). Starbucks was rated the highest for Flavored Coffee (4.76) but the lowest for regular coffee (4.45). Tim Horton’s was rated the lowest for Flavored Coffee (4.29). Dunkin Donuts was rated the lowest for Espresso Beverage (4.17) and Frozen Coffee (4.36).

Speed:

Tim Horton’s finished in first place, clocking in with an average wait time of 2 minutes and 49 seconds. Following closely behind were Peet’s Coffee (2:54) and Caribou Coffee (2:56). The longest wait times were at Starbucks (3:33).

Reason For Choosing:

Location! Location! Location! The old adage is proven true once more, as a whopping 89% of shoppers cited location as a key factor in visiting that particular store. Quality of Coffee was cited second most frequently, with all other factors finishing below 20% (multiple selections were permitted)

Easy To Please:

What is an Easy To Please score?

To determine how easy it is to please customers in a given state, we looked at four ratings (all on a 1-5 scale).

Service Rating

Quality Rating

How Likely To Return To This Store?

How Likely To Recommend This Store?

By adding the combined Return & Recommend scores and dividing by the combined Serve and Quality scores, we arrive at the Ease to Please score.

Which area was the easiest to please?

Washington D.C. shoppers had the lowest Ease to Please score of all the states with a measly 0.88 ratio, meaning they can receive great service and quality and STILL not be highly likely to return or recommend! At the other end of the scale are North Dakota and South Carolina. With Ease to Please scores of 1.3, those states are where you want to be if you’re a barista!