SAN RAMON, Calif. -- Chevron Corp. will begin selling Starbucks Corp.'s Seattle's Best coffee brand in its 550 ExtraMile gas station convenience stores, according to a report by Bloomberg.
Chevron will not sell Seattle's Best in all of its approximately 8,000 locations, Ian Noble, district sales manager at the San Ramon, Calif.-based company, told the news agency. "We would not be able to execute" that scale of a program, he said.
ExtraMile is Chevron's higher-end gas station brand with stores in California, Oregon and Washington.
A 20-ounce cup of coffee will cost $1.56 at Chevron, compared with $1.86 at Seattle's Best retail stores. The same size coffee at Starbucks is $1.95.
Seattle-based Starbucks also forged a deal with Kmart, owned by Hoffman Estates, Ill.-based Sears Holdings Corp., which will begin selling Seattle's Best packaged coffee in the United States in March, Chris Bruzzo, the brand's chief marketing officer, told Bloomberg. All of Kmart's approximately 1,300 stores will have it by the end of this year, he said.
Starbucks is putting the brand into other U.S. retailers, including some Yum! Brands Inc. Taco Bell locations. Subway and Burger King Holdings Inc. restaurants also sell the coffee.
Seattle's Best is sold in about 20,000 grocery and mass retail stores and is becoming more important to Starbucks' grocery business, Bruzzo said.
"We're feeling confident that we can build this into a billion-dollar brand," Bruzzo told the news agency. Seattle's Best is going to places where it has "traditionally been hard to find great coffee," he said.
Seattle's Best Coffee has been roasting premium coffee since 1970 and now roasts more than 20 million pounds of coffee every year and serves millions of cups of coffee every day. Seattle's Best Coffee is currently available in cafes and kiosks as well as locations such as college campuses, restaurants, hotels, airlines, cruise ships, bookstores, grocery stores and movie theatres. It was acquired by Starbucks in 2003.
San Ramon, Calif.-based Chevron, one of the world's leading integrated energy companies, explores for, produces and transports crude oil and natural gas; refines, markets and distributes transportation fuels and lubricants; manufactures and sells petrochemical products; generates power and produces geothermal energy; provides energy efficiency solutions; and develops biofuels. It has more than 8,000 retail locations in the United States on the West Coast and in the South. In addition, the company supplies more than 2,500 stations in southern and eastern states with Texaco-branded fuel.
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