It has often been commented how the growth of High Street coffee shops has usurped the traditional role of pubs as informal meeting places. So it’s interesting to see that Starbucks are trialling serving a range of beer and wine in some of their outlets in the USA and Spain.
Clarice Turner, the company’s US vice-president, said that the beer and wine selection would be tailored to each location as much as possible to reflect local tastes and “would be refined over time”.They say they have no plans to extend this to the UK, but it would be ironic if they ended up in effect reinventing the pub for the 21st century.
Turner added: “The move is a natural progression for us as we are always looking for ways to evolve and enhance the Starbucks experience based on what our customers are telling us.
No surprise that this is being done in Spain where the the line between Bars and Cafes is practically non-existent.
ReplyDeleteJust as the successful introduction of coffee in Wetherspoons has helped enable them to serve alcohol earlier (whether for good or bad), alcohol in Starbucks might enable longer opening times and allow me to get a decent coffee after 7pm; hard to find at the moment.
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