Princi, the historic bakery brand from Milan, has opened its first standalone single-brand boutique store in the USA, in Seattle. The venue is to be operated by Starbucks, which entered into a licensing agreement with Princi in 2016 and is planning to open two more stores in Chicago and New York. ‘The Princi bakery and café’, opened on Westlake Avenue, is indeed part of Starbucks’ program to develop internationally premium stores.
AN ITALIAN BRAND GOES INTERNATIONAL
Princi brand and its products can already be found in the Roastery and Reserve stores of the Seattle giant. Rocco Princi opened his first boutique bakery in Milan in 1986. Today there are six stores, along with the one in the Soho district of London. Thanks to the joint venture signed in 2016, Princi is the exclusive food supplier of all new Starbucks Reserve Roastery: from Shanghai, opened in December 2017, to Milan (scheduled for the end of 2018) to Tokyo thereafter. Starbucks plans to open a thousand stores worldwide.