Starbuck’s is a global chains with locations all over the world. However, one major hub that the company has difficulty entering into is Italy. However, Howard Schultz has announced its plans to expand with a franchising partnership with Antonio Percassi. Antonio Percassi is a businessman who gave Italy Victoria’s Secret and Zara. It is rumored that there will be an official Starbucks by Christmas.

Schultz has been planning his expansion into Italy, but because of Italy’s peculiar culture of coffee and cappuccinos, it has become difficult. However, Starbucks alters its menu to cater to regional tastes like Japan’s espresso-lemon lattes. Starbuck’s plans to colonize Italy by creating cafés to be high-tech meet-up spots where middle-aged bankers, lawyers, and businesspeople can sit in quasi-comfy chairs and use free WiFi.

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An all day breakfast menu has been an option that McDonald’s fans have been requesting for a long time. However, while McDonald’s did open breakfast menu’s to all day in 229 locations, results have showed that, more havoc was caused then making greater sales.

Franchisees for 229 U.S. locations participated in a survey about the breakfast menu and called all-day breakfast “erratic, distorted, disorganized” and “a non-starter.” Offering all-day breakfast slows down service considerably and creates inconvenient damages, and situations in the kitchen. “People falling over each other” and “equipment jammed in everywhere.” Franchisees also report that sales aren’t that great, and even if they were it’s damage is worse. “We are trading customers down from regular menu to lower-priced breakfast items.”

McDonald’s hoped with its extension of the breakfast menu, many locations would grow in sales. However, while customer demands were met, because of the effects of slow service and sub-par quality, many customers are tending away from the fast-food chain. All-day breakfast also creates more work, and for franchisees to hire extra labor.

Company executives in Oak Brook seem to be the only locations that insist that all-day breakfast was “successful.”

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Chobani, the Greek-yogurt company, has announced their plans to sell off between 10 and 20 percent of the company. Although Chobani is a gree-yogure company, the two biggest suitors for the company shares is Coca-Cola and PepsiCo. With either of the company’s investment, Chobani can be potentially worth as much as $3 billion. Moreover, with an investment from an empire company like Coca-Cola or PepsiCo, Chobani can collaborate with strategic plans for distribution and manufacturing of their products.

Coca-Cola and PepsiCo plan to acquire shares of Chobani and its products, one that trends have catered towards. Industry analysis and trends show people are not diverging from the greek-yogurt trend. Moreover, with Chobani’s recent headlines of Chobani founder, Hamdi Ulukaya acquiring shares of La Colombe, and its future plans on collaborating with both companies, Coca-Cola and PepsiCo. are eager to be involved with Chobani’s growing partnerships.

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Starbucks has been moving quickly to adopt new technology in their restaurant. It invested in Square, installed Clover coffee machines, which makes more individual cups of brewed coffee, and recently introduced “Mobile Order and Pay.” This focus in technology has inevitably proposed a new position at Starbucks- Chief Technology Officer. The company has announced that Gerri Martin-Flickinger will serve as the company’s first-ever chief technology officer. She served as the senior vice-president and chief information officer recently at Adobe, where she got major praise for shifting the company’s software to a cloud-based system.

This new position is replacing the title of chief information officer. This swap in title reflects the mobile focus that Starbucks is shifting to in the future. Starbucks has announced that “We needed leadership talent with deep experience in cloud, big analytics, mobile and security to take us to the next level…Gerri stood out as someone who has years of experience in Silicon Valley and brings deep management and technical expertise to help us navigate the future.”

Starbucks hopes that with Martin-Flickinger, the company will enter “its next phase” in technology. Martin-Flickinger will take up the role officially on November 2.

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