Starbucks Coffee Co.

Seattle -- Starbucks Coffee Co. details its expansion plans for Latin America, including the opening of its first shop in Costa Rica on June 20. The company also said it plans to open "several hundred stores” in Brazil the next five years. (Starbucks has full ownership of its business in Brazil.)

Starbucks and joint-venture partner Alsea expect to add more than 300 new stores in Argentina and Mexico by 2015.

New York -- Staples and Starbucks Coffee Co. have joined a voluntary national initiative to reduce energy consumption. Under the Better Buildings Challenge, companies commit to reducing the energy use in their facilities by at least 20% by 2020, and to post their annual power consumption and information on their conservation projects on a U.S. Department of Energy website.

Staples, with 43 million sq. ft., joined the Better Buildings Challenge with a commitment to reduce energy intensity by 25% by 2020 and reduce its carbon footprint by 50% by 2025.

Bellevue, Wash. -- Coinstar, best known for its Redbox movie rental and its namesake coin-counting kiosks, and Seattle’s Best Coffee, part of Starbucks Coffee Co., have entered into an agreement to roll out Coinstar's new Rubi coffee kiosk in groceries, drug stores and mass merchants. The kiosks will feature a variety of Seattle's Best Coffee beverages.

The rollout will begin this summer, with approximately 500 kiosks expected by the end of the year and thousands of machines in place during the next several years.

Seattle -- Starbucks Coffee Co. is looking to expand its food business. The chain has entered into an agreement to acquire San Francisco-based Bay Bread and its La Boulange bakery brand, as well as to hire its well-known French baker, Pascal Rigo. The cash deal is valued at $100 million.

Las Vegas -- As retailers and shopping center executives returned to their respective home bases following their biggest show of the year – RECon – they did so with talk of recovery echoing in their ears.

This year’s event – the International Council of Shopping Centers’ RECon convention, held May 20-23 in Las Vegas – was a platform for discussions about expansion and freer capital, albeit tempered by what industry experts are calling a new discipline in the way we all do business.

I’m just back from the retail real estate industry’s annual confab, the International Council of Shopping Centers’ RECon, in Las Vegas. As part of the event, Faith Hope Consolo, chairman, Prudential Douglas Elliman, hosted a panel discussion of retailers at the Women’s Special Industry Group meeting. Here are some of the more notable quotes from the discussion:

Brenda Godfrey, VP global store development, Starbucks Coffee Co.

Seattle -- Starbucks Corp. announced a series of management changes that it said it was undertaking to accelerate its innovation and growth. The changes come after Starbucks missed its global sales forecasts in April, mainly due to a downturn in Europe.

The company named Craig Russell, the senior VP U.S. Store Services, as senior VP of the Global Coffee division.

By Matthew Talbot, [email protected]