Starbucks and Caribbean Coffee Baristas
Limited, a consortium led by Margaritaville Caribbean Group, have
opened Jamaica’s first Starbucks® store at Doctor’s Cave Beach in
Montego Bay
Up to 15 Starbucks® stores expected to open
over the next five years with a focus on creating local jobs,
delivering a unique customer experience, and supporting the
region’s coffee producers
Starbucks Reserve® Jamaica Blue Mountain coffee
featured, marking key milestone in company’s long history of
sourcing coffee from Jamaica
Starbucks Jamaica to work with MultiCare Youth
Foundation to support job training for disadvantaged youth
Starbucks (NASDAQ: SBUX) today opened its first store in Jamaica
and entered its 76th market globally, marking a historic milestone
for the global coffee company’s Caribbean operations and its
storied history of sourcing the highest quality coffee from the
region going back more than four decades.
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Starbucks and Caribbean Coffee Baristas
Limited, a consortium led by Margaritaville Caribbean Group, have
opened Jamaica’s first Starbucks® store at Doctor’s Cave Beach in
Montego Bay. (Photo: Business Wire)
The new café, located at Doctor’s Cave Beach in Montego Bay,
offers customers an inviting destination to relax, unwind and
connect in one of the area’s most iconic neighborhoods. Featuring
custom artwork by local artist Fiona Godfrey, the store’s unique
design pays tribute to Jamaica’s history and rich coffee heritage.
Customers can enjoy a wide range of Starbucks beverages and food,
including its signature handcrafted hot and cold espresso beverages
made with 100 percent arabica coffee. To mark this historic
opening, the company is also featuring Starbucks Reserve® Jamaica
Blue Mountain whole bean coffee, a long-time favorite with
Starbucks customers in the U.S. and Canada.
“As a company that has worked for many decades with Jamaica’s
coffee growing communities, we are honored to have the opportunity
to work our local business partner Caribbean Coffee Baristas to
open our first store in the beautiful island nation of Jamaica,”
said Ricardo Rico, Starbucks general manager and vice president for
Latin America and the Caribbean, who attended the opening
celebrations in Montego Bay. “For Starbucks, this is an opportunity
to build on more than forty years of the best in-store experience
to customers around the globe that is rooted in high-quality coffee
and our engaged, knowledgeable baristas. Our new Starbucks Jamaica
partners (employees) are ready to welcome customers, as we mark the
beginning of this exciting chapter in the Caribbean market.”
Starbucks® stores in Jamaica are operated by Caribbean Coffee
Baristas Ltd., a joint venture between Ian Dear, Chief Executive
Officer of leading restaurant management and franchise operator
Margaritaville Caribbean Group and Adam Stewart, who is also Deputy
Chairman and Chief Executive Officer of Sandals Resorts
International. Together, they plan to open up to 15 locations in
Jamaica over the next five years, with a shared commitment towards
creating opportunities for Starbucks employees, delivering a unique
and unmatched customer experience, and supporting the region’s
coffee producers. Following Montego Bay, the company expects to
open in Kingston in 2018.
“As a leading Caribbean hospitality group, our achievements have
always been guided by listening, responding and delivering on our
customers’ expectations,” said Dear. “Bringing Starbucks, a
globally recognized and respected brand, to our Jamaican shores, is
a natural progression for us. We pledge to continue providing the
high standards that we and Starbucks are known for. This is another
occasion for us to create fantastic opportunities, for everyone
involved, and to create another global platform for our
locally-grown Blue Mountain Coffee. We know that this venture will
be highly successful, and we look forward to an exciting future
with Starbucks.”
“We are thrilled to welcome Starbucks to Jamaica and bring the
Starbucks Experience to customers on the island,” said Stewart.
“Through our shared values, including our dedication to delivering
the best customer experience, commitment to be an employer of
choice, and operating responsibly in the communities we serve, we
aim to create a truly unique coffeehouse experience here in
Jamaica.”
“In addition, I believe that Starbucks, with its long-standing
love of Jamaican Blue Mountain coffee, represents one of the
greatest opportunities for the incremental growth in the export of
our locally-grown coffee,” said Stewart.
Honoring Jamaica’s Rich Heritage through Coffee and
Design
In celebration of Starbucks launch in the market, customers can
now enjoy Starbucks Reserve® Jamaica Blue Mountain whole bean
coffee – a rare and exceptional coffee grown by Amber Estate farms
in the Blue Mountain region, and roasted exclusively at the
state-of-the-art Starbucks Reserve™ Roastery in the company’s
hometown of Seattle. The company also plans to source Jamaican
coffee for single origin coffees and blends for its stores in other
markets across Latin America, and connect agronomists and technical
experts from the Starbucks Global Agronomy Center to coffee
producers in Jamaica.
“This coffee is an opportunity for us to recognize and thank
Jamaica’s coffee growing community for their continued partnership
on this special single origin coffee, while introducing our first
customers in Jamaica to a very special part of Starbucks own coffee
journey – an amazing coffee that is roasted in our one and only
Starbucks Reserve Roastery back home in Seattle,” said Rico.
In addition, through a unique store design, the new Starbucks
café showcases the iconic brand while also celebrating the Jamaican
people and their rich culture and heritage. The 1,200-sq.-ft. space
sits within the protected Montego Bay Marine Park at Doctor’s Cave
Beach, one of the most treasured and renowned beaches in Jamaica.
The store features distinctly local design elements such as
pickled-wood vaulted ceilings and louvered windows, preserved from
their original state and enriched to create an authentic beachside
café experience.
Custom artwork from locally based artist Fiona Godfrey is
featured throughout the space. Godfrey, an Irish artist who has
called Jamaica home for more than 25 years, created a custom mural
for the new Starbucks® store featuring a lion, which she notes is
the “perfect icon to create a sense of place in Starbucks Montego
Bay” as well as the Doctor Bird, a national symbol for Jamaica. The
juxtaposition of the small bird and the majestic lion, echo a
popular expression in the country – “We likkle but we tallowah” –
to show that while Jamaica is a small nation it has had a huge
global impact across the arts, culture, sports, coffee and more.
Godfrey also incorporated Jamaica’s famous misty blue mountains in
the background of her mural – a bow to world-renowned Jamaican
coffee. A familiar local greeting of “hail up,” hand-painted by
local company Carlton & Sons Signs and Graphix and local artist
Sheridan Burgess, greets customers as they enter the store, and a
well-wishing “walk good” meets customers at the end of the coffee
bar.
The color palette of Godfrey’s mural draws from the colors of
Jamaica – black, green, yellow and red – with touches of gold and
ochre for the lion’s face. “Jamaicans love gold, and we win a lot
of it,” said Godfrey. Similar gold touches can be found throughout
the new store. The coffee bar is covered in walnut panels that
feature subtle gold-painted reveals, the backwall granite is
embedded with delicate gold flecks, and an excerpt from Jamaican
poet Reginald M. Murray’s “The Song of the Blue Mountain Stream” is
hand-painted in gold, serving as a backdrop as Starbucks baristas
craft beverages at the Espresso Bar.
“Fiona did such a beautiful job on the mural for this store, and
from the first conversation we had with her, we knew she would be
the one to give this store its soul,” said Denise Rodriguez, design
manager for the Starbucks store in Jamaica. “The lion is meant to
represent the heart and spirit of the Jamaican people. He’s not a
fierce or intimidating lion, he’s majestic and mighty, but gentle
and caring – connecting eyes with the hummingbird, or Doctor Bird
as it’s locally called, and embracing her, acknowledging her, and
respecting her. The hummingbird is not threatened by the powerful
lion, as they are proudly harmonious, much like Jamaica
itself.”
Creating Opportunities for Jamaican Youth
Starbucks has a long history going back more than forty years of
investing in the communities it serves worldwide by creating
opportunities for young people, particularly those in underserved
communities. The company plans to similarly partner with Caribbean
Coffee Baristas Ltd. in Jamaica to support initiatives aimed at
connecting young men and women in the community with the resources
and support they need to succeed. Starbucks partners recently
volunteered at the Garland Hall Memorial Children’s Home, painting
and refurbishing the orphanage. The company is also looking at ways
to support food donation and book and clothing drives.
In line with its global efforts to connect youth to economic
opportunities, Starbucks plans to work with the MultiCare Youth
Foundation to develop a Life and Work Skills training program for
local youth from disadvantaged backgrounds, with a focus on 16- to
29-year-olds who are not in school or employed. With funding from
The Starbucks Foundation, the program is intended to support youth
in both Montego Bay and Kingston and will include customer service
skills training to ensure youth are ready to access employment in
the retail, service, or hospitality industries. By working with the
MultiCare Youth Foundation, Starbucks also plans to include
volunteer opportunities for partners to serve as mentors to
participating youth.
Starbucks has operated stores in the Caribbean since 2002, when
it opened its first store in Puerto Rico’s Old San Juan. It now
operates in six Caribbean markets, including the Bahamas, Aruba,
Curacao, Trinidad and Tobago, and now Jamaica. For Starbucks, which
first opened in 1971 in Seattle’s historic Pike Place Market, the
opening in Jamaica marks its 17th market in the Latin America and
Caribbean region and 76th global market.
About Starbucks
Since 1971, Starbucks Coffee Company has been committed to
ethically sourcing and roasting
high-quality arabica coffee. Today, with more than 27,000
stores around the globe, Starbucks is the premier roaster and
retailer of specialty coffee in the world. Through our unwavering
commitment to excellence and our guiding principles, we bring the
unique Starbucks Experience to life for every customer
through every cup. To share in the experience, please visit our
stores or online
at news.starbucks.com and Starbucks.com.
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version on businesswire.com: http://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20171121005199/en/
Starbucks Global CommunicationsAlisha Damodaran,
+1-206-318-7100press@starbucks.comorCaribbean Coffee Baristas
Ltd.Nicola Groves,
+1-876-410-6485nicola.groves@starbucks.com.jm
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