History Of Starbucks

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The foundation of Starbucks first international market outside of North America started with Japan in the year 1996 when it opened an outlet in Tokyo’s Ginza district as a joint venture between Sazaby League and Starbucks Coffee International, the international arm and subsidiary of Starbucks Coffee Company. Since it was its first foray internationally, their approach was to rely on local partnership to get everything up and working. Therefore, Starbucks formed a 50:50 joint venture - called Starbucks Coffee Japan Ltd with Sazaby, a major Japanese retailer and restaurateur. This alliance combined two major lifestyle companies that would provide the Japanese consumers a new and unique specialty coffee experience. Starbucks Coffee Japan was formed with capital of $1.5 million, …show more content…

Starbucks also leveraged the fact that since Japanese loved their tradition and national festivals, it developed limited-time seasonal drinks such as the Sakura (cherry blossom) Frappuccino, Christmas season Frappuccino, Baked Strawberry Cheesecake Frappuccino, Chocolate Brownie Matcha, Cantaloupe Melon and Cream Frappuccino, Azuki Matcha Frappuccino and many more. Some of the Starbucks Japan's stores offer wine and beer, but the coffee giant introduced its own cocktail concoction, called the "Wine Fraggino.". The cocktail is actually a Frappuccino but the caffeine is replaced with a specialty blueberry wine. Not only did Starbucks Japan make changes in its product offerings, it also removed their signature service of asking for a customer’s name when writing down their order as a result of the Japanese highly valuing their privacy and Japanese etiquette that dictates that Starbucks customers be called by the items they order, not their

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