DURBAN -
Starbucks officially launched their first store in Durban on Tuesday night.
Starbucks has a net worth of $87,54 billion and altogether has 24 000 stores across 70 countries.
The location for the new store is a popular Durban hotspot, the trendy and up and coming Florida Road.
While last night's soft opening was "a preview of the store", the official opening of Starbucks in Durban will be Saturday the 25th of November. So you will just have to wait for your non-fat skinny latte till then
Reserve Concept Starbucks
This store has a reserve concept within the Starbucks brand. This concept is all about rare, small-lot coffees. The coffees are generally not found in the general coffee industry, according to Starbucks.
This means that these three coffees are very limited in quantity and will not be available all the time. Starbucks has three staple reserve coffees in season. These coffees are, Aged Sumatra, Vietnam da lat and Ethiopia bitta farm.
Aged Sumatra has flavour notes of black licorice, Vietnam da lat has notes of vanilla and toffee and Ethiopia has a flavour profile that has hints of chocolate and banana.
The reserve concept is very rare and can only be found in 5% of the world's Starbucks stores.
In South Africa, there are only three reserve concept stores. These reserve concept store can be found in Roebank, the Mall of Africa and now in Durban.
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Carlo Gonzago, CEO of Taste Holdings, spoke about why Durban is the perfect location for Starbucks.
Gonzaga said, "The coffee culture has grown here in the past few years and the Durban market is ready for the Starbucks experience".
This Durban store employs a staff of 78 people and a third of their staff were unemployed youth.
According to Gonzago, the skills that the staff have been taught is their passport to the world.
He also wants to instill in them lessons that when you "conduct business it is through the lens of humanity".
THE DECOR
All the furniture and the interior of the store is locally sourced and completed by local artisans.
According to Gonzago, Starbucks Durban store is unique. "The equipment is the same in each store only the design is different."
Starbucks will expand their Durban franchise by opening another store at the Gateway in Umhlanga next month.