The coffee chain has announced that the "Starbucks Evenings" program in 439 company-owned stores in the U.S. will end Jan. 10. It said the program may continue in some of the nine licensed stores where it is offered, or overseas including the 4 stores in Canada where it started the program only last year and is expected to further expand. This program will make way for some upscale locations that will serve alcohol alongside its higher-end coffees.
The Starbucks Evenings approach was first put in place in a Starbucks in the chain's Seattle hometown in 2010. It was expanded as a way to drive sales beyond the morning rush. In addition to alcohol, the evening menu featured foods like bacon-wrapped dates.
Two year ago, Starbucks said in 2014 that it planned to expand wine and beer to thousands of stores. Now, it says it will integrate beer and wine into its higher-end retail format, such as Roastery stores. Chairman and CEO Howard Schultz plans to step down in April 2017 and take role of Executive Chairman. He will focus on the development of Reserve Roasteries around the world, expanding the Reserve format and Starbucks' social impact work. The coffee chain plans to open 12,000 new locations within 5 years to boost its number of coffee shops worldwide by almost 50 per cent.
The company website has gone to great length to find and promote similarities between coffee and wine. Wine and coffee actually have a lot in common. Any sommelier or coffee master will take you through a similar tasting process of swirl/stir, inhale, and slurp. Both wine and coffee come from fruit (coffee “beans” actually grow as coffee cherries). And those great adjectives that describe wines apply to coffee, too: fruity, spicy, nutty, citrusy, sweet. To get the whole story, check out their website.
About 5,000 of the 12,000 stores Starbucks plans to open by 2021 will be in China. Without setting a Timeline, the company expects China to eventually overtake the U.S. as its largest market. Out of the 25,000 stores there are about 2,500 stores in China and more than 13,000 in the U.S.
Starbucks made an entry in October 2012 as an equal joint venture with Tata after a false start in 2007 and had 84 stores (in May 2016). It might have been too early to get the Starbucks Evenings started in India, the concept tickled the fancy of similar stores in India with only lukewarm response, the latest one being Wendy’s Burger chain in Gurgaon.
Barista was the first coffee chain to take an initiative to start selling wine and beer at a couple of but found out soon enough that it was not easy to succeed, especially because of the licensing costs.
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