Starbucks will sell a majority stake in its China business to a private-equity firm run by the grandson of a former Chinese president.
Boyu Capital reportedly beat out several Western investors including Carlyle and EQT for the business and its 8,000 stores in China, where Starbucks introduced coffee culture to a tea-drinking public but lost ground to local rivals selling pineapple and baiju lattes. CEO Brian Niccol is pressing for a return to Starbucks’ roots as a “third place,” along with adding local flavors to the company’s vanilla and pumpkin-spice lineup.
“A lot of these competitors right now are only focused on convenience and flavor. We’re going to be able, I think, to out-innovate them on flavor. We can definitely match them on digital. And then we can have a real point of difference on experience,” Niccol told Semafor’s Andrew Edgecliffe-Johnson in September.