Starbucks may soon serve use Tata’s Indian coffee in its global outlets

• Tata Global Beverages is planning on supplying Tata Coffee to Starbucks worldwide.
• Tata Coffee already has an exclusive contract with Starbucks to source and roast coffee beans.
• The company is using the Indian Estates Blend to match global standards of coffee,

About 100-odd Starbucks outlets in India already make their coffee using coffee beans from Tata Coffee, but Tata Global Beverages wants to take this initiative global. In fact, they’ve already starting supplying India’s own homegrown coffee to the Starbucks Reserve in Seattle as a pilot demonstration.

Starbucks first came to India in partnership with Tata Global Beverages through a 50/50 joint venture back in 2012. Their roasting and sourcing was exclusively done with Tata Coffee LImited.

Starbucks has some 300,000 suppliers in its supply chain and a vertical integration model in place, that ensures quality maintenance as well as ethical practices.

Hitting the global standard

Tata Coffee Limited, a subsidiary of Tata Global Beverages, has a microlot model that helps break the traditional notion that Indian coffee doesn’t match up to Latin American blends.

Its Indian Estates Blend, cultivated in the Nullore and Yemmigoondi estates of Karnataka, is harvested in the same manner to match global standards.

Since the soil conditions and climate issues in India aren’t the best for coffee, they’ve taken their 8,000 hectare plantation and divided it into 800 microblocks. That’s 10 hectares per block.

This enables the company to micromanage each block as per specific climate and soil parameters. Thus, farmers can keep track of each variable individually.

Aside from going the Starbucks way, Tata Coffee Limited also has plans to set up a manufacturing plant in Vietnam. This will be the company’s first international unit and is expected to be operational by January next year.