Starbucks Brews Up Plans To Launch In Italy

Starbucks will grow its global footprint into a new region next year.

The coffee company announced yesterday (Feb. 29) that it plans on opening its first store in Italy in early 2017, starting in Milan. Starbucks also announced that it was jumping into the retail market in the region via a partnership with real estate developer Percassi.

This move, the company notes, comes 33 years after its CEO took his first business trip to the region, which eventually became the inspiration for Starbucks.

“Starbucks’ history is directly linked to the way the Italians created and executed the perfect shot of espresso. Everything that we’ve done sits on the foundation of those wonderful experiences that many of us have had in Italy, and we’ve aspired to be a respectful steward of that legacy for 45 years,” said Starbucks CEO Howard Schultz. “Now, we’re going to try, with great humility and respect, to share what we’ve been doing and what we’ve learned through our first retail presence in Italy. Our first store will be designed with painstaking detail and great respect for the Italian people and coffee culture. And my hope is that we will create a sense of pride for our partners — so much so that every partner who sees our store or walks through the doors will say: ‘We got it right.’”

Starbucks said it plans to keep history and cultural heritage in mind when opening up the shop in Italy.

“We know that we are going to face a unique challenge with the opening of the first Starbucks store in Italy, the country of coffee, and we are confident that Italian people are ready to live the Starbucks experience, as already occurs in many other markets,” said Antonio Percassi, president of Percassi.

In other unrelated news for Starbucks, Chase Pay is going to be integrated into the Starbucks mobile app, which is being used at more than 7,500 of the latter’s retail locations. The payments relationship will begin later this year.

The mobile app has been responsible for roughly 10 percent of the sales conducted in the United States inside of the coffee chain’s brick-and-mortar locations, through the process known as “order ahead,” where 6 million transactions took place in the fourth quarter alone, Starbucks said in its most recent earnings announcement.