Starbucks Corp has asked its adviser, Houlihan Lokey, to assess interest for its UK operations, the Times reported on Saturday.
The coffee chain has not initiated a formal sale process, but continues to “evaluate strategic options” for its international operations, the newspaper said.
The UK is Starbucks’ largest market of all in Europe, the Middle East and Africa.
Photo: Reuters
As of last year, it had 1,000 stores in the UK, with 297 company-owned and 703 run by licensees, Starbucks said in a financial report for the fiscal year ending in October last year.
Total revenue was ￡328 million (US$388.83 million) for the fiscal year, and Starbucks UK Coffee had repaid in full a ￡25 million loan from its parent company to offset losses from reduced sales during the first months of the COVID-19 pandemic, it said.
While the coffee chain experienced a rebound in revenue after pandemic-related lockdowns eased in the UK, it said the financial performance of company-owned stores had not recovered to pre-pandemic levels.
Starbucks opened 14 new stores during the last fiscal year and closed five, it said.
Coffee chains in the UK might need four years to recover from the COVID-19 slump, market researcher Allegra Group said earlier this year.
Separately, Amazon.com Inc said it would this year create more than 4,000 new permanent jobs in the UK, the smallest number it has announced in at least three years, despite planning to open two more fulfillment centers in the north of England.
The new roles are to span corporate, technology and delivery positions, some of which are to be based at warehouses opening in Wakefield and Knowsley later this year, the Seattle-based firm said in a statement on Friday.
It marks a deceleration in Amazon’s publicized recruitment efforts in the UK. In 2020, it said it would create 7,000 new local positions; a year later, it announced the addition of 10,000 more.
A spokesman for the company said that last year it exceeded that figure by more than double.
However, Amazon in April told investors that pandemic-fueled hiring and warehouse-building was taking a toll, as e-commerce sales growth inevitably slowed from the torrid pace of the COVID-19 outbreak. Fuel and labor costs were already biting, and soaring inflation has only continued since.
Still, the company said that by the end of the year it would have 75,000 permanent employees in the UK, making it one of the nation’s largest private-sector employers.
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