Roundup: Starbucks announces partnership to open first store in Italy

After years of reports by the Italian press of an upcoming opening of Starbucks in Italy, the Seattle-based coffee chain on Monday officially announced a partnership to open the first Starbucks store in Italy next year.

A statement published both on the website of business company Percassi, confirmed as Starbucks licensee in Italy, and on that of Starbucks, said that Percassi will own and operate Starbucks stores, with the first store opening in Milan in early 2017.

"Starbucks history is directly linked to the way the Italians created and executed the perfect shot of espresso. Everything that we have done sits on the foundation of those wonderful experiences that many of us have had in Italy, and we have aspired to be a respectful steward of that legacy for 45 years," Starbucks Chairman and CEO Howard Schultz was quoted as saying in the statement.

"Now we are going to try, with great humility and respect, to share what we have been doing and what we have learned through our first retail presence in Italy," he went on saying.

Schultz underlined that the first Starbucks store in Italy will be designed with "painstaking detail and great respect for the Italian people and coffee culture" with the hope to "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.'"

Percassi is a renowned Italian company with a proven track record of operating highly-successful major brand partnerships across 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.

Founded in 1976 by Antonio Percassi, the company is focused on managing its portfolio of own trademarks or in joint venture, in addition to the development and the management of the sales networks of important brands.

Headquartered in Bergamo, in northern Italy, Percassi has also activities in the real estate business with the development and improvement of major real estate projects in the sales and managerial sector.

Italian experts told Xinhua in recent interviews that here are some elements of Italy's highly competitive market that have somehow put the brakes on Starbucks' opening in the past.

Not only the country's figures indicate that there is a bar for every 400 residents in Italy, but Italians also have a strong liking for a type of coffee, espresso, which is certainly not the flagship product of Starbucks. Moreover, the average price of a coffee in Italy is just 96 euro cents (1.05 U.S. dollar), whereas it is significantly higher at the American chain.

In order to be profitable and sustainable in a new market, Starbucks needs a sufficient number of points of consumption, as well as the possibility to train staff and manage a series of issues, according to Massimiliano Bruni, director of the food & beverage knowledge center at SDA school of management of Bocconi University in Milan, who told Xinhua he had talked to Starbucks two years ago about the opening of stores in Italy.

"The key issue is that Starbucks thinks in terms of chain, that is to say in terms of economies of scale, where suppliers and everything are standardized. It would make no sense for the American giant to open just a few shops in a new country," noted Luciano Sbraga, director of studies office of FIPE, the Italian federation of bars and restaurants (FIPE).

Sbraga told Xinhua that Starbucks has analyzed the Italian market in depth, with the aim to find the best way to deal with such a complex market. "The possibility to enter and then withdraw cannot be taken into account as such a move would be seen like a failure," he highlighted. Endit