Grande opening: Milan gets Italy's first

Starbucks
US coffee chain hopes 2,300 sq metre flagship will entice Italians to try
new coffee experience

Jon Henley

@jonhenley
Thu 6 Sep 2018 14.35 BSTFirst published on Thu 6 Sep
2018 10.48 BSTShares1,555

An employee prepares a coffee inside the new Starbucks in Milan. Photograph: Stefano
Rellandini/Reuters

Starbucks has hit the spiritual home of the espresso, opening its first branch in Italy.

The US coffee giant said it was “the most beautiful Starbucks in the world”, housed in
a 2,300 sq metre former post office in Piazza Cordusio, near the city’s cathedral. It
was not intended to “teach people about coffee”, the firm said. “This is where coffee
was born.”

Instead, the Seattle-based company’s chief design officer, Liz Muller, said Starbucks
wanted to “bring a premium experience that’s different to what people in Italy are
used to ... including different brewing techniques, and a space to stay longer, relax
and enjoy”.

In Italy – where according to the Italian catering federation, FIPE, more than 6bn
espressos are consumed every year – the morning or after-lunch ritual is mostly kept
short, performed standing up in a small neighbourhood cafe and costs about a euro.

That may go some way to explaining why the chain, well established
across Europe after opening its first branch in London in 1998, has repeatedly
delayed its entry into the Italian market, originally planned for early last year.
Its outspoken former CEO, Howard Schultz, who stepped down in June amid talk of a
possible White House run in 2020, said earlier this year that the company would
approach Italy, its 78th global market, with “humility and respect, to show what we’ve
learned ... I came to Milan as a young man, in 1983. My imagination was captured by
Italian coffee.”

But the way even Italians drink their coffee is changing. While previously an espresso
was “an opportunity to have an energy ‘shot’, consumers today increasingly care more
about quality and the experience they can have”, market researcher Matteo Figura
told Agence-France Presse, adding that 18- to 34-year-olds in particular had different
tastes.

Milanese office workers often meet colleagues after work for an aperitivo.

Cafe-owners nearby confessed they were both dubious and alarmed. “It remains to be
seen if they’ll get a foothold in Italy,” said Alessandro Panzarino, who runs the Cafe
Martini around the corner.

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The entrance to the new flagship coffee shop in Milan. Photograph: Stefano
Rellandini/Reuters

Panzarino told AFP he was certainly a little concerned, and expected to see an initial
boom in trade at “this new colossus”, but added: “Then we will have to see if people
get bored after a while – and are happy to spend so much.”

At least one committed Italian coffee drinker seemed unlikely to be won over. “I
really don’t like Starbucks coffee,” said Simonme Dusi. “I like strong coffee, so
absolutely no way to diluted coffee or variants like Frappuccino!”

Starbucks, which turned over $22.4bn last year from nearly 29,000 cafes, clinched its
Italian deal with the help of Antonio Percassi, a former footballer responsible for
bringing the Spanish clothing chain Zara and the US lingerie retailer Victoria’s Secret
to the country.

The coffee chain said it had more Milan stores in the pipeline, but declined to say how
many.
Trump inauguration crowd photos were
edited after he intervened
Exclusive: documents released to Guardian reveal government
photographer cropped space ‘where crowd ended’

Jon Swaine in New York

@jonswaine
Thu 6 Sep 2018 11.00 BSTLast modified on Thu 6 Sep
2018 20.23 BSTShares28,926

A combination of photos shows the crowds attending the inauguration ceremonies of Donald
Trump, left, and Barack Obama. These pictures were taken by Reuters, and were not the
edited NPS images. Photograph: Staff/Reuters

A government photographer edited official pictures of Donald Trump’s inauguration

to make the crowd appear bigger following a personal intervention from the
president, according to newly released documents.

The photographer cropped out empty space “where the crowd ended” for a new set of
pictures requested by Trump on the first morning of his presidency, after he was
angered by images showing his audience was smaller than Barack Obama’s in 2009.

The detail was revealed in investigative reports released to the Guardian under the
Freedom of Information Act by the inspector general of the US interior department.
They shed new light on the first self-inflicted crisis of Trump’s presidency, when his
White House falsely claimed he had attracted the biggest ever inauguration audience.

It was not clear from the records which photographs were edited and whether they
were released publicly.

By the time Trump spoke on the telephone with Reynolds on the morning after the
inauguration, then-and-now pictures of the national mall were circulating online
showing that Trump’s crowd fell short of Obama’s. A reporter’s tweet containing one
such pair of images was retweeted by the official NPS Twitter account.
An NPS communications official, whose name was redacted in the released files, told
investigators that Reynolds called her after speaking with the president and said
Trump wanted pictures from the inauguration. She said “she got the impression that
President Trump wanted to see pictures that appeared to depict more spectators in
the crowd”, and that the images released so far showed “a lot of empty areas”.

News › UK › Home News

British-born boy refused

entry to UK on return from
summer holidays granted
emergency passport
A British-born boy who was blocked from returning to the UK after a
holiday has been granted an emergency passport after being stranded in
Brussels for four days.
Six-year-old Mohamed Bangoura was unable to reunite with his mother after
he was prevented from boarding a flight from Zaventem airport to
Manchester under Home Office orders on Sunday.
After The Independent revealed his plight on Tuesday, a number of
politicians wrote to the department demanding to know why the child had not
yet been flown home four days later.

Following intervention by the child’s MP, Labour’s Paul Blomfield, on

Thursday, immigration minister Caroline Nokes said she would authorise the
issue of emergency travel documents.

The Home Office said it would be in contact with the family in the next 24
hours to make arrangements for reuniting the mother and son. The Foreign
Office is speaking to his family in Belgium to assist with the arrangements
there.
Hawa Keita, Mohamed’s mother, told The Independent she was thrilled at the
news that she would finally be reunited with her son.

‘I just want to see my son. Now he can go back to school’ (Hawa Keita)

“I am so happy. Oh my god. I just want to see my son. Now he can go back to

school. I am feeling so good,” said the 29-year-old.

After speaking with Ms Nokes, Mr Blomfield said: “I’m grateful for [the
minister’s] intervention. This should never have happened, but now
Mohamed and his mother will be reunited without further delay.”
Critics branded the case “truly shocking” and said the act of blocking a UK-
born child from returning home was “shameful” and “exactly one of the
effects” of the government’s hostile environment policy.