FLORENCE--Are you serious, Howard Schultz? Eater.com reports that Starbucks is planning to put a move on Italy's reasured coffee shops.
"Starbucks history is directly linked to the way the Italians created and executed the perfect shot of espresso," Schultz is quoted as saying. "Now we're going to try, with great humility and respect, to share what we've been doing and what we've learned through our first retail presence in Italy."Backstory: the Marzocco is the medieval symbol of Florence, a heraldic lion, a grey sandstone beast sculpted in 1420 by Donatello for the papal suite of the Medici palace. The espresso machines branded Marzocco are produced at a factory in the hills northeast of town. Back in Seattle, in the back of a Pioneer Square sandwich shop called Hibble & Hyde there was a winged, copper-clad coffee machine called Victoria Arduino. The owner, a tinker named Kent Bakke, took off for Italy to learn more about the devices, and came back with a contract from La Marzocca to distribute them in the US. His first sale, six units, was to a young coffee company called, ahem, Starbucks.
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