Alshaya expands Starbucks into Greece and Cyprus as Middle East growth slows

Starbucks has handed Alshaya Group exclusive ownership and operation of its Greece and Cyprus business, putting 48 stores and about 500 workers under the Kuwait-based franchise giant as the chain pushes farther into partner-led growth.

The transfer, announced April 8, 2026, covers 30 stores in Greece and 18 in Cyprus and moves the business into new operating entities, Alshaya Hellas SMSA in Greece and Murgab Cyprus Ltd in Cyprus. Jacqueline Delpippo, Starbucks Greece & Cyprus business manager at Alshaya Group, will oversee the transition. Giannis Marinopoulos, whose group had run the business since its launch in 2002, thanked staff and customers for the long partnership.

The move matters well beyond Athens and Nicosia. Alshaya is already one of Starbucks’ oldest and largest licensed partners, with more than 2,000 stores across 13 markets, and the company has used the same playbook before, taking Starbucks into Turkey in 2003 and later into Kazakhstan and Azerbaijan in 2015. In Southern Europe, that history makes this look less like a simple market handoff and more like Starbucks deepening a model built on local operators who know site selection, regulation and store execution.

The timing is telling because growth in several core Middle Eastern markets, including the UAE, Saudi Arabia and Oman, has slowed over the last 18 months. Starbucks has still pointed to the region as a major growth engine, saying its partnership with Alshaya includes plans for 500 new stores and 5,000 jobs over the next five years. At the same time, Starbucks’ January 2026 investor day framed international growth as a major priority and projected more than 2,000 net new stores globally across company-operated and licensed locations by fiscal 2028.

Europe remains part of that push. Starbucks said its EMEA business ended fiscal 2025 with 4,982 stores, up from 4,862 the year before, and it was still on track to open 80 new stores in the UK and 150 across EMEA that year. The company also said it had carried out an EMEA store review to make sure coffeehouses were in the right places and formats, a reminder that the next phase of growth is being shaped as much by operating discipline as by expansion.

Saleh Alshaya cast the acquisition as a continuation of the group’s growth vision for its licensed Starbucks business, while Duncan Moir said Alshaya was well placed to take the brand to new heights in the region. The deal suggests Starbucks’ international growth is increasingly being built through partner-led markets, with Alshaya now serving as one of the clearest examples of how that strategy is reshaping Europe.