Starbucks Celebrates Five Years in Italy with the Opening of the Starbucks Reserve Roastery Milano
After forty years since the founder of Starbucks, Howard Schultz’s first visit to Italy in 1983, his dream of bringing the brand to Italy finally came true on September 7, 2018, with the opening of the first store. Thus began the adventure of the American giant in Italy with the Starbucks Reserve Roastery Milano, located in the central Piazza Cordusio. It is the only Reserve Roastery in Europe, the Middle East, and Africa, a tribute that Starbucks wanted to dedicate to Milan and our country.
Starbucks is celebrating the fifth anniversary of its arrival in Italy with a rich calendar of events. Since then, this adventure has been a shared challenge with Percassi, Starbucks’ licensed partner in Italy, which has opened 30 stores in the most picturesque cities of the peninsula, including Rome, Florence, Verona, Turin, Genoa, Bari, and Bergamo. More stores are also set to open by the end of the year.
The Starbucks Reserve Roastery Milano will kick off the celebrations, hosting a series of events until October 1. These events range from coffee workshops to mixology evenings, and from blues, jazz, and bossanova concerts to book presentations. It will also host events during Milan Fashion Week in September. The festivities will continue in November, with Percassi offering consumers two coffee tastings per week, featuring different coffee blends and extraction methods, in all Starbucks stores from north to south of Italy, allowing them to experience the Starbucks experience. Other events are currently being defined.
With this anniversary, Starbucks also celebrates its partners, the backbone of its stores, welcoming and engaging thousands of customers every day throughout Italy. Since its arrival in our country, the company has hired around 1,200 partners, accompanying each one on their professional journey and providing a total of approximately 160,000 hours of training. For each new Starbucks store, the company is committed to supporting the territory, not only through donations to local non-profit organizations such as Banco Alimentare and the Don Gino Rigoldi Foundation in Milan but also by enhancing the artistic and architectural heritage of the cities where the brand is present. The Starbucks Reserve Roastery Milano is the most emblematic example of this, being made with precious materials from Italy and involving Italian design brands and craftsmen. Each opening represents a milestone and inspiration to continue the path started five years ago. Therefore, more new stores are planned for the end of the year, and after much anticipation, Starbucks will finally arrive in Naples.
“We are proud to be the first store to open in Milan, pioneers in a successful journey that celebrates its first five years today,” says Louise Mills, Director & General Manager of Starbucks Roastery. “The Starbucks Reserve Roastery Milano is a unique and suggestive place that attracts tens of thousands of visitors from all over the world every week. Together with our partners, we enthusiastically celebrate this day of sharing achieved results. Our goal is to constantly improve our standards of quality and service, thanks to the important contribution of our employees and suppliers.”
Vincenzo Catrambone, General Manager of Starbucks Italy, adds: “We are very pleased to have been able to bring the Starbucks experience to Italy and to let more and more Italian consumers experience it. I believe it is a mutual enrichment: from new drinks to different coffee extraction methods, to the way people experience the stores in their different formats. Today, five years later, I look at the milestones achieved by Starbucks and Percassi, looking to the future with the same passion as when I started, continuing to expand the store network, maintaining the values and quality of work that have been fundamental to our success.”
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