Starbucks China announces "Tailored to Each Store" strategy: plans to invest in new brewing equipment in office building and commercial district stores, and allows stores to customize their music playlists.

On April 8, Starbucks China announced that the strategic partnership between Starbucks Global and Boyu Investment has been launched. After the joint venture, Starbucks China will drive Starbucks’ continued growth and enhanced customer experiences in China through a deeper understanding of the local market and resource synergies, more agile local decision-making and deployment capabilities, and an innovation rhythm that is more closely aligned with the pulse of the China market.

It is reported that, around “1,000 stores, tailored to each,” Starbucks China will focus on five strategic initiatives.

The first is a professional coffee first choice. This includes a full range of flavor selections. It is reported that the light-roast coffee beans “Spring and Bright Scenery,” which were specially customized for the China market to celebrate Starbucks China’s new chapter, have officially launched. Next, offering more brewing methods means that, building on more than 10 ways to brew coffee already available—including espresso, pour-over, French press, siphon, cold brew, and gas-driven cold brew—Starbucks will invest in new brewing equipment in more than 1,000 office building business district stores, and roll out the “Daily Fresh Brew,” with daily black coffee and milk coffee combinations to meet the high-quality coffee needs of daily commuters.

In the professional barista partner area, building on the existing Black Apron Coffee Masters, Starbucks will officially open a brand-new career path for “Regional Coffee Masters.” In the future, each operations manager region will be equipped with one full-time Regional Coffee Master, responsible for the development of coffee culture in the region.

The second is product innovation focused on high quality. Starbucks China will focus on leading health trends. For example, following the “True Flavor Sugar-Free Innovation Platform,” this year it has strategically launched the “High-Protein Innovation Platform.” For the global-to-local fusion of gourmet food, Starbucks China will blend global and local food trends and inspiration to create a richer journey of discovery for customers’ palates. This summer, users will see more refreshing fruit-flavored coffee and new iced shaken tea products, as well as a newly upgraded Frappuccino.

In the field of highly customized products and refined menu management, Starbucks China will continue to deeply break down the multi-dimensional combinations such as coffee beans, brewing methods, flavor, sugar level, milk, and temperature to meet customers’ highly customized needs. At the same time, it will present the most relevant product combinations and menus for different business districts, cities, and times of day.

The third is scene-based store expansion. It mainly includes accelerating coverage of previously blank business districts and markets. It is reported that Starbucks’ store footprint has already covered more than 1,000 county-level administrative regions, and over the next three years, this number will increase to more than 1,500 county-level administrative regions. At the same time, while continuing to expand in existing cities into new business districts and demands, even Shanghai—which already has more than 1,100 stores—still has new business districts to be developed, and Starbucks China will open more stores where customers need them.

For localized, scene-based customer experiences, Starbucks China says it will create localized experiences for each store—for example, providing reliable, healthy meals for hospital stores, rolling out specialty souvenir products for culture and tourism stores, and opening more non-heritage experience stores that pay tribute to local culture in more cities.

In terms of flexible store formats, from the smallest Starbucks at 10 square meters, to coffee carts found at major concerts, to convenient modular office-building stores, and to more than 800 Reserve and theme stores, Starbucks will flexibly expand through diverse store formats to precisely meet the needs of each community.

The fourth is building a “one store, one community” initiative for partners. This includes further increasing the richness of interest-community spaces, launching more initiatives to help partners build the most suitable “one store, one community.” Also, from the partners’ self-driven creation perspective, partners will be able to customize in-store music playlists, organize activities suitable for the store, and create signature beverages that have an opportunity to generate revenue through the electronic menu.

The fifth is AI-assisted human connection. This includes the plan for 1,000 AI Chief Growth Officers (CGO). That is, using AI as the smart, in-store counterpart of a CGO, deeply rooted in the community and closer to customers—so that each store’s marketing needs can be better addressed. At the same time, it will upgrade the store manager AI assistant. By empowering store partners with AI intelligence, it not only efficiently handles back-office tasks such as placing orders and scheduling, but also helps manage new business scenarios more easily, such as meeting tea breaks and AI ordering.

(Company announcement)

(Editor: Lin Chen)

Keywords:

                                                            Starbucks Coffee
                                                            Foodservice