Starbucks to double its China stores in five years as Chinese middle class adopts coffee culture

Starbucks plans to add over 10,000 new jobs a year in China over the next five years as part of the US coffee giant’s big bet on the nation of tea drinkers, where coffee culture is flourishing amid a booming middle class despite an economic slowdown.

Besides aiming to more than double its store count in China to 5,000 by 2021, the world’s largest coffee chain is brewing up a 30,000 sq ft premium coffee house in Shanghai, described by its new China head Belinda Wong as “the second Disneyland” in the making.

In an interview with the Post at a “Bing Sutt”-style Starbucks café in Central, which pays homage to the traditional 1950s Hong Kong coffee shop decor, Wong spoke of her vision since stepping into her role as the Seattle-based company’s first China operations chief executive late October.

“In China in the coming five years we are definitely adding 10,000 plus new jobs every year. We open 500 stores a year and our goal is by 2021...to have 5,000 stores,” said the 44-year-old, who has been named in the top 25 on Fortune China’s annual list of the country’s most influential businesswomen since 2012.

“This is the early chapter of our China growth right now. We have barely even scratched the surface.”

That expansion is poised to make China, where the middle class have awakened to the taste of coffee ever since Starbucks opened its first store in 1999, the largest market outside the US within the next few years.