Starbucks has launched a new brand of coffee grown by farmers in China and said it hopes to bring the blend to stores all over the world.The Seattle-based company, which has been closing stores in the U.S. to cut costs, said its new blend is made in China’s southwestern province of Yunnan, bordering Vietnam, Laos and Myanmar.
“Our intention is to work with the officials and the farmers in Yunnan province to bring Chinese coffee not (only) to China, but Chinese coffee to the world,” Martin Coles, president of Starbucks Coffee International, told The Associated Press.
“Ultimately I’d love to see our coffees from China featured on the shelves of every one of our stores in 49 countries around the world,” he said. A launch date for foreign distribution hasn’t been announced and will depend on how soon farmers can grow enough beans to ensure local and overseas supply.
The company has been working for three years with farmers and officials in the province before the launch, and the coffee will initially combine arabica beans from Latin America and the Asia-Pacific with local Yunnan beans. But Coles said they hope to develop a source of superpremium arabica coffee from the province, expanding it to new brand offerings in China, and then internationally.
The new blend will be called “South of the Clouds,” the meaning of Yunnan in Chinese.
Wang Jinlong, president of Starbucks for greater China, which includes Taiwan, Hong Kong and Macau, said the company wants to make its coffee from China as well-known and as high-quality as Chinese tea.
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