Tata Starbucks targets 50 to 100 new India stores a year

Tata Starbucks’ plan to add 50 to 100 stores a year in India will not just test real estate and demand, it will test whether the company can keep finding, training and promoting enough workers to staff every new café without weakening standards. For baristas, shift supervisors and store managers, that kind of growth means more openings on paper, but also more pressure on hiring, onboarding and day-to-day scheduling.

N. Chandrasekaran laid out that expansion at Tata Consumer Products Ltd.’s 63rd annual general meeting on June 10, saying Tata Starbucks is a “high-potential” business, that the joint venture turned EBITDA positive in FY26, and that management sees a long-term path to about 8,000 stores in India. Tata Starbucks is a 50:50 joint venture between Tata Consumer Products and Starbucks Corporation, and it has been operating in India since 2012.

The scale of that ambition is easier to see in the recent numbers. Tata Starbucks crossed 500 stores across 80 cities in FY26, added 23 net new stores in that year and 58 net new stores in FY25, which was then its highest annual increase. If the company actually sustains 50 to 100 openings a year, it would need a steady stream of trained store managers, assistant managers and shift leads just to keep pace, especially in a market where each new site adds another layer of labor planning, inventory control and customer-service expectations.

The business is also showing better financial traction alongside the expansion push. Revenue rose 7% in FY26 to Rs 1,367 crore, and the company narrowed its annual loss. The combination of improving unit economics and faster store growth is the clearest sign yet that Tata Starbucks is moving from a narrow urban rollout to a broader operating model that will have to hold up across more cities and more labor markets.

For workers, the next question is whether that growth translates into real promotion paths and steadier operations, or whether the drive to hit store-count targets stretches the system thin. A chain that grows this fast can create more jobs and more internal advancement, but only if training capacity, management development and staffing discipline grow just as quickly. Otherwise, the pressure lands where it usually does in food service: on the floor, in the rush, and on the people trying to make the schedule work.