Coffee in your car: Starbucks opens a new type of outlets in Bulgaria

The US coffee chain Starbucks plans to open a new type of facility in Bulgaria - the so-called ‘drive-through’. It is a type of takeaway service provided by a business that allows customers to buy products without leaving their cars.

We have been looking for a suitable location for about a year. We will start with Sofia. After that, we can look at other cities," said Ivan Georgiev, regional director for Bulgaria and Romania of "Amrest Bulgaria" - the company that represents Starbucks Coffee International locally, speaking to Economic.bg.

There are no specific deadlines for the opening of the new type of facilities yet, as the company is still in the process of choosing the "perfect location".

The first location must be perfect. It must be on a main thoroughfare, have easy entry/exit and be visible from afar. At the moment, we are considering several options", says Georgiev and specifies that after choosing a location, it takes between 6 and 9 months to open the site.

Everything that is offered in the chain's conventional cafes will also be offered at the drive-throughs, with the difference that orders will be placed directly from the customer's car.

The drive-through format was first introduced in the United States in the 1930s and has since spread to other countries. In Europe, it is not very popular yet, with the exception of the United Kingdom.

We have one such location in Romania and there we saw that the model works. We (Bulgarians) have similar preferences to the Romanians, so we hope that this model will be successful here as well", says Ivan Georgiev.

Translated by Tzvetozar Vincent Iolov