Starbucks signs deal with Village Hotels

Starbucks has made another move towards developing coffee shops inside British hotels. The coffee chain has done a deal with Village Hotels to open in 10 of their sites, the first in Ashton Moss (near Ashton under Lyne).

This deal, says the coffee-house chain, will "build on Starbucks' growing hotel licensee business portfolio", but at the moment that is a little generous, because this is only the second one, following an opening within a Shire Hotels site in Bristol in March. Starbucks does, of course, have experience of 171 in-hotel concessions in the USA, where it also has nearly 4,000 licensed sites in various kinds of venue.

The next Village Hotels sites to feature Starbucks will be in Walsall, Elstree and South Leeds, Swansea and Maidstone, with the sites of the next four coffee houses after that yet to be confirmed.

The new site is operated by Village Hotels staff, uniformed as Starbucks, but beyond that, nothing further is known other than the extremely vague corporate information that Starbucks ‘will provide products such as coffee', which might have been expected.

Gary Davis, chief operating officer of Village Hotels has said: "This partnership will also give us the opportunity to reach new customers and broaden our portfolio. Village Hotels are undergoing a massive expansion and we are hoping to extend our portfolio to 50 sites in the next five years and are looking forward to extending our partnership across more sites in the future."

By Ian Boughton