Starbucks’ Evolution Juice Opens Factory to Quadruple Production
(Bloomberg) -- Starbucks Corp.’s juice unit Evolution Fresh will quadruple capacity with the opening of a new factory as the coffee company seeks to increase its share of the $1.6 billion super-premium fruit drink industry.
Evolution Fresh, which was acquired by Starbucks in 2011 for $30 million, will employ 190 employees at the new facility in Rancho Cucamonga, California, the company said today in a statement. The $70 million, 264,000 square-foot (24,526 square-meter) juicery will be Starbucks’ sixth manufacturing site in the U.S., following five coffee-roasting plants.
The new factory is a “testament to the breakthrough of cold-pressed juice,” Chris Bruzzo, general manager of Evolution Fresh, said in an interview.
Starbucks, based in Seattle, sells Evolution Fresh juice in about 5,000 of its cafes and will roll out the beverage to all of its about 11,200 U.S. stores in the next year, Bruzzo said. The world’s largest coffee-shop operator has been expanding its product offerings -- in cafes and grocery stores -- to include salads, baked goods and other packaged products, as it seeks to broaden its scope beyond coffee.
Evolution Fresh juice is stocked in 3,000 grocery stores in the U.S., Bruzzo said, including Whole Foods Market Inc. (WFM:US), which started selling the juices, along with Evolution Harvest snack bars, in August. It plans to be in more than 8,000 Starbucks and grocery retailers by the end of the year, according to the statement.
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