Starbucks making major push in France in bid to increase international presence

By Hailey Fitzpatrick
Starbucks is expanding its international presence. The powerful coffee chain just announced a partnership with Casino Restauration to open Starbucks stores within Geant Casino Hypermarkets and Casino Supermarkets in France.

Casino Restauration is a subsidiary of Groupe Casino, a French mass retailer that operates 10,416 stores.

127 of those stores are Geant Casino hypermarkets, and 444 are Casino Supermarkets.

Full-format Starbucks will open within Groupe Casino's grocery sites, allowing customers to enjoy its products while they shop.

Although the exact number of store openings is unavailable, this news is incredibly promising for Starbucks considering only a little more than 100 of their 2200 stores across the Europe, Middle East, and Africa regions are in France.

"This new partnership with Casino Restauration means we can deliver a quality Starbucks experience to many more people in convenient locations across France," said Kris Engskov, president of Starbucks EMEA, in the release.

Starbucks chose the mass retailer to increase their international footprint because of its successful history and size.

"Casino Restauration has the perfect network and local expertise to deliver this new growth in the hypermarkets and supermarkets right across the country, where our customers want us to be," Engskov said in the release.

The first location is expected to open before the end of 2015.

Starbucks has made a lot of changes recently and is continuously restructuring. It's closing its $100 million La Boulange bakery chain, making changes to its menu, and expanding different mobile platforms.