Starbucks Corp plans to increase the number of its cafes in the Americas by more than 20 percent by opening more than 3,000 new shops there in the next five years as it looks to rely on tea and juice as much as coffee, it said on Wednesday.The world's largest coffee chain is also finished with acquisitions for the time being, after buying juice seller Evolution Fresh for $30 million and Bay Bread LLC's La Boulange Bakery for $100 million over the last 13 months. Starbucks also has an agreement to purchase tea store chain Teavana Holdings Inc for $620 million."We're pretty full up at this time in terms of our resources and capabilities," Chief Executive Officer Howard Schultz said at Starbucks' investor conference in New York on Wednesday. "At this moment in time, we have enough to handle."Food long has been a weak link at Starbucks, which plans to roll out sweet and savory La Boulange pastries and other goodies at 2,500 of its company-operated U.S. shops by the end of next year. Starbucks also expects to have Evolution Fresh juices in more than 5,000 U.S. stores by the end of 2013.
Teavana Holdings, Inc. (Teavana) is a specialty retailer of loose-leaf teas, authentic artisanal teawares and other tea-related merchandise. Shares of TEA traded higher by 7.0% or $1.008/share to $15.41. In the past year, the shares have traded as low as $9.75 and as high as $26.03. On average, 854848 shares of TEA exchange hands on a given day and today's volume is recorded at 2751566.
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