Starbucks is to open 140 new coffee shops in the UK this year after its British operation swung back into the black from losses in 2020 and resumed paying corporation tax.
In the first year of the pandemic, the US-owned chain received a tax credit of £4.4m in the UK after racking up a pretax loss of £40.9m.
According to accounts to be filed this week at Companies House, revenue in the year to 3 October rose by 35% to £328m as sales recovered in its company-owned stores and franchised sites. At the operating level, it swung from a loss of £37.4m to a profit of £16.5m.
Starbucks, which was founded in 1971, has more than 33,000 cafés and entered Europe in 1998. The UK is its biggest European market. At the year-end it had exactly 1,000 stores, of which 297 were company-owned and 703 run by franchisees. Last year it opened 14 company-owned stores while five shut permanently.
It said that since the pandemic it had sought rent concessions from landlords of sites where trade had been hit and to “restructure leases”.
