Starbucks to set coffee retail chain before year-end

STARBUCKS, the Seattlebased coffee retail chain, is hopeful of having its first store in India up and running before the end of the current calendar year, according to Mr Colman Cuff, director of trading and oprations of Starbucks Coffee Company.
Speaking to the media on the sidelines of the India International Coffee Festival-2007, Mr Cuff said the company had 12,700 outlets globally and planned to add another 2,400 outlets this year.
On the cafe culture in India, Mr Cuff said that he was impressed by the growth of this sector. While refusing to comment on Starbucks offtake of Indian beans, he said the company was procuring both from exporters as well as producers from India.
Mr Cuff said Starbucks had been able to build its business reputation with a keen eye on quality and being socially caring. He cited the example of the company’s CAFE (Coffee & Farmer Equity) programme which had helped to focus on issues like quality of the product (coffee) and economic transparency.
In FY’05 (running from October to September), Mr Cuff said that the company had procured 155 million pounds of green coffee under the CAFE programme which increased to 225 million in FY’06. He said that certified coffee accounted for 4% of total procurement, while fair-traded coffee accounted for 6% of the purchases.
“We are keen that coffee producers are not short-changed. It is for this reason that we are insisting on economic transparency and 98% of the coffee Starbucks procured in 2006 met this criteria,” he added.
Mr Cuff said that promotional events like the single estate produce from Rwanda had helped to increase coffee acreage in that country. The procurement centre which is based at Luassane in Switzerland was sampling as many as 500 types of coffee every day.

courtesy:economictimes For more on Retail India visit www.retailindia.tv