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Starbucks To Open 300 New UK Outlets as Sales Grow

  • Spence Cooper
  • December 6, 2011

The Guardian’s Tim Dowling reflects on how UK coffee consumption has surprisingly increased despite the lagging UK economy, and modest overall consumer spending.

In a country where tea is considered the national drink, Dowling claims consumers in the UK are drinking plenty of lattes.

So much so that Starbucks is planning to open 300 new outlets, bringing the UK total to more than 1,000. Much of the expansion will be in the north of the UK. Starbucks currently has nine drive-throughs in the UK but wants to increase this to 200.

Starbucks is also adding an extra 100 coffee shops, which in total will involve 5,000 new jobs. Starbucks’ UK sales have grown for nine quarters in a row.

“This might be a better time than any to expand,”said Kris Engskov, Starbucks’ managing director for the UK and Ireland. “Rents are coming down across the UK. If there’s anything we’ve learnt over the last few years, especially in the US, it is to invest ahead of the curve”

Dowling cites research from Glasgow University that found wildly varying levels of caffeine in shop-bought coffee, with some outlets selling espresso with six times the caffeine found in others.

“One Glasgow shop was selling espresso shots with 322mg of caffeine in it, which sounds like something you’d drink on a dare. Guess whose coffee came bottom, with just 51mg per serving? Starbucks.”

According to The Financial Times, Starbucks’ UK move differs from their US strategy where expansion most recently was geared toward healthier drinks. “Starbucks is paying $30m to acquire Evolution Fresh, a Californian juice maker, that it will use to open a new line of outlets focused on nutritious products”.

It’s strange to think that decent coffee, not so long ago a rarity in Britain, is something we now regard as an entitlement, writes Dowling, who amusingly characterizes coffee as the “poor man’s antidepressant”.

Starbucks To Open 300 New UK Outlets as Sales Grow“As licit mood-altering substances go, coffee is the only one that most consistently maintains a near equal balance of news stories proclaiming its dangers and touting its benefits: it’s almost exactly as bad for you as it is good for you.”

Research indicates Dowling’s conclusion about coffee being the “poor man’s antidepressant” has some merit. Several studies have found coffee reduces the rate of suicide.

One study of 128,934 nurses conducted in 1993 found that coffee drinkers were significantly less likely to commit suicide than nondrinkers.

A second study confirmed these findings, claiming coffee dropped the suicide rate. Published in the Archives of Internal Medicine in 1996, the study followed more than 86,000 registered nurses in the United States between 34 and 59 years of age for ten years.

Dr. Ichiro Kawachi, an epidemiologist at Harvard Medical School who led the 1996 study confirmed the 1993 study results, and discovered nurses who drank two to three cups of coffee a day were one-third less likely to commit suicide as those who didn’t drink any.

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