Starbucks’ bigger China plans [Starbucks] #China #Starbucks

Starbucks strikes again, more firmly into the minds of the Chinese core.

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Starbucks’ bigger China plans
By Zhang Haizhou and Linda Deng in Seattle
Source – China Daily, published March 22, 2012

Lindsey Pringle, assistant manager a Starbucks Store in downtown Seattle, shows a Chinese customer Ethiopian coffee beans. Deng Yu / China Daily

The first Western coffeehouse chain to enter this tea-drinking nation may soon be stocking China’s grocery stores with their ready-to-brew packages of coffee.

The Seattle-based coffee giant has big plans for China. It is not only considering opening hundreds of new cafes across the country in the coming years, it is hammering out an idea to sell a varietal of coffee from Yunnan province under its brand to grocery stores and open a “community store”, in which the chain donates a portion of the store’s sales proceeds to help a local community organization.

John Culver, president of Starbucks China and the Asia-Pacific, said the company is “looking at the possibilities” of selling both packages of their ground coffee and bottled drinks in Chinese grocery stores.

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