So, as Santo Domingo keeps growing with more tapones everyday... so is Starbucks. Sourced from users in Twitter:
View attachment 9783
A new location next to Holiday Inn at Abraham Lincoln Ave.
And a new Starbucks in front of the old Super Pola (now Sirena Market) at Lope de Vega. This one used to be a Impuestos Internos office.
View attachment 9784
By the way, Café Santo Domingo has 20 locations nationwide. So far, Starbucks has 7 and with these 2, expands to 9 stores.
Could Starbucks dethrone Café Santo Domingo in the DR? Let's see how it goes.
Probably..Cafe Santo Domingo uses imported coffee anyway. It's not coffee from DR... few years ago it was imported from Vietnam...now I have no idea.
Starbucks uses coffee from Colombia plus going to startbucks has more status than going to Cafe Santo Domingo. They get their coffee in starbucks and start taking photos with the cups and bake goods. Not the same in Cafe Santo Domingo.
This is from a few years ago:
"In a surprising development, the Dominican Coffee Confederation (Concafed) has announced that most of the coffee currently sold in the Dominican Republic is now imported, due to the collapse of domestic coffee production.
The secretary general of Concafed, Carlos Ramirez said that 70% of the 30,000 families that make a living off coffee growing are living in poverty, and of those, 24% in extreme poverty. From a peak production of 1,300,000 quintals or hundred weight (cwt), production is down to 250,000 cwt a year, with an estimated average yield of 10 to 15 lbs per tarea (1 tarea = 629 square meters).
He attributed the collapse of the coffee farms to the coffee rust virus and the lack of attention from the governmental agriculture authorities. He said coffee plantations need to be renovated, but the sector does not have funding or access to technical assistance. As a result, in recent years coffee production has significantly declined."
