Café Blue to add two stores in two months
Published:Friday | August 26, 2011 | 12:00 AM
Marcella Scarlett, Business Reporter
Clifton Mount Estate Limited, owners of Café Blue, will be expanding business in Kingston and Montego Bay over the next two months.
Clifton Mount is the oldest functioning coffee estate in Jamaica and a producer of Blue Mountain coffee, which it supplies to Café Blue and other markets.
Café Blue already operates three coffee shops: at Sovereign Centre, Liguanea, St Andrew; Irish Town, St Andrew; and Rose Hall, Montego Bay. New shops will open at Norman Manley International Airport, Kingston, in September and at Fontana Pharmacy at Bogue, Montego Bay, in October.
The size of the investment was not disclosed.
"We are opening one in the airport at the Blue Moon Café. We are taking it over and refurbishing it. We are in the final stage of discussions now with the airport and the current owners," Jason Sharp, director of marketing and sales, told the Financial Gleaner. Clifton Mount and Café Blue are owned by the Sharp family.
Sharp said it too early to pronounce on the outcome of the negotiations for the Blue Moon Café slot, but said he was upbeat.
"Everything appears to be going in the right direction. We have not finished with the paperwork and signing of documents yet, but everything looks like it is going in the right direction," he said.
Café Blue sells hot and cold beverages, as well as pastries. Sharp said price, quality, general business practices and ambience is standardised across stores, but that there could be variations in the product offerings.
"Product line will be very, very similar for the most part — prices will be the same, same quality, same price, but we have to take the environment in consideration. Take the airport; we cannot sell certain things in the airport," he said.
Clifton Mount's build out of its retail chain comes amid plunging coffee export sales across the industry, whose combined overseas trade fell 46 per cent from US$36 million in 2009 to US$19 million in 2010.
Sharp acknowledged that the retail shops would bring in more business, but said it was not the main reason driving the expansion.
"We would do it whether or not the market was declining. But, yes, we are considering this expansion as a plus for our sales," he said. "We have always had plans to expand."