Starbucks to Open in Colombia

Starbucks Corp. (Seattle) is opening its first location in Colombia, part of an accelerating expansion plan into Latin America.

The company that advertises Colombia as the source of so much of its coffee product will open a cafe in Bogota in the first half of next year, and then five more locations later in 2014.

Bloomberg News reported that the stores will be operated through a joint venture between Alsea SAB (Mexico City) and Grupo Nutresa SA (Medellin, Colombia).

Earlier this year, Alsea – which also operates Latin American retail for Domino’s Pizza and Burger King – took full ownership of Starbucks in Argentina and Chile. It will have a 70 percent stake in Starbucks operations in Colombia. Grupo Nutresa is Colombia’s largest publicly traded food company.

“This is long overdue,” said Starbucks ceo Howard Schultz. “There is tremendous enthusiasm as we talk to people and walk the streets — most of these Colombian people we talked to have consumed Starbucks coffee somewhere else.” He said it would be disappointing if Starbucks didn’t have 50 stores in Colombia in five years.

In 2012, Starbucks bought about 545 million pounds of coffee from 29 countries, about 27 percent more than it bought the previous year. Recently, the company has invested in countries where it buys beans, to help secure supply and consistent quality as it opens more locations. Earlier this year, Starbucks bought a farm in Costa Rica to experiment with coffee varieties and expand its grower-support program.