By David Alire Garcia
MEXICO CITY, Oct 15 (Reuters) – Latin America’s biggest
restaurant operator Alsea will invest $110 million
over the next three years in 220 new Starbucks cafes in Mexico
and Argentina, Alsea’s CEO Fabian Gosselin said on Monday.
Around $75 million of the three-year investment would be
plowed into 170 new stores in Mexico, Starbucks’ fastest-growing
Latin American market, with the balance going to No.2 regional
market Argentina, the company told Reuters.
Starbucks’ franchises in Mexico are operated by Alsea, which
also runs Domino’s Pizza and Burger King chains
within the country.
Seattle-based Starbucks Corp, the world’s largest
coffee chain, currently has 360 cafes in Mexico, but sales
accounted for just a small fraction of the company’s overall
2011 global net revenue of $11.7 billion.
“I think the best is yet to come in terms of the number of
stores, and how big this market can be,” Starbucks CEO Howard
Schultz told a news conference on a visit to Mexico City to mark
the chain’s 10th anniversary in its fastest growing Latin
American market.
While the majority of Starbucks’ some 18,000 stores are
located in the United States, the company has seen much more
success in Mexico than the company’s next biggest markets in the
region; both Argentina and Brazil host about 50 stores each.
Starbucks top executive in Mexico, Federico Tejado, says the
company’s local growth over the past decade tracked a roughly
240 percent increase in per capita coffee consumption during the
same time.
In an interview, Tejado also confirmed that Starbucks is
planning to launch its Via brand of instant coffee in Mexico,
but declined to say when, adding the company would reveal more
details in November.
In September, Leticia Sainz, Starbucks’ technical
coordinator in Mexico, told Reuters the company expects to begin
offering Via “very soon.”
Although consumption of fresh coffee in Mexico is growing
faster, instant, or soluble, coffee is still the country’s
dominant brew.
According to a study released earlier this year by market
analysis group Euromonitor, Mexico’s domestic coffee market is
valued at $1.4 billion a year.
The country has long been a major coffee exporter, and is
currently the world’s No. 7 producer of high-end Arabica beans.
