Coffee Bean & Tea Leaf Returns to NY With Plans for 100 Stores
Coffee Bean & Tea Leaf Returns to NY With Plans for 100 Stores
(Bloomberg) -- Coffee Bean & Tea Leaf is returning to New York City with plans to open 100 cafes, less than two years after shutting all 12 locations in the area.
The new stores will be operated through franchisee Hudson River Coffee & Tea, the company said Tuesday in a statement. The first of the shops will open in Manhattan later this year, it said.
The coffee and tea chain, which has 311 stores in the U.S. and more than 1,200 worldwide, had a dozen locations operating in New York City. They closed in October 2016 because of issues between the franchisee and corporate management, the New York Business Journal reported.
New York has a competitive coffee landscape and the move signals that the chain wants a piece of the action dominated by Dunkin’ Donuts, Starbucks Corp. and local shops. Some 62 percent of New Yorkers consume coffee on a daily basis, Coffee Bean & Tea Leaf said in the statement, citing a recent poll by Siena College Research Institute.
“New York has always been an important market for us,” JJ Smith, vice president of franchise operations & business development, said in the statement.
The Los Angeles-based company was founded in 1963.
To contact the reporter on this story: Lisa Wolfson in Boston at lwolfson@bloomberg.net
To contact the editors responsible for this story: Anne Riley Moffat at ariley17@bloomberg.net, Jonathan Roeder
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