New Starbucks in Moscow Safeway
The Safeway over in Eastside Marketplace is feverishly remodeling. There was even a crew of workers on scissor lifts at 10:30 PM when I was there last Sunday evening. I overheard that a new in-store Starbucks is going in where the deli is now. Now at least there will be a source of coffee within walking distance when I take my kids to the indoor “tree slide” playground. The mall there has been without coffee for several years, ever since “The Daily Cup” moved to 3rd and Main and then proceeded to go belly-up.
Safeway has been doing this with a lot of their stores. It was so successful a few years ago with their Pullman location that it practically put the regular Starbucks retail shop down the street out of business! Also, I’ve heard that corporate Starbucks has a mixed relationship with these satellite stores. They aren’t able to exert near as much branding and management control over them. One thing that drew people to the Pullman Safeway Starbucks was their promotions. They had a buy-seven-get-one-free drink special (tied to your Safeway card) going for several years. They also printed up in-house coupons for free drinks and would sometimes put them in the local paper or send them to certain email lists. The retail store down the street was prohibited from doing any of these things. At the in-store Starbucks, you could also buy a 50 cent bagel at the bakery a few feet away instead of shelling out $1.50 for the (usually stale) Starbucks bagel behind the coffee counter. In the end though, I think the retail location’s tiny parking lot on Stadium Way was their #1 problem.
I believe the new Eastside Marketplace Safeway Starbucks is set to open in late August, just in time for the fall semester.
In other news, New Starbucks Opens In Rest Room of Existing Starbucks.
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