A new Starbucks Drive Thru coffee shop is opening in the Somerset town of Taunton, creating 16 new jobs.
Starbucks licensee Cobra Coffee is set to open the store at Deane Retail Park on Wednesday, June 8. It will be the second branch in the town operated by a regional co-operative, which Cobra Coffee is part of.
To mark the opening, the store will be offering 50 customers a free reusable cup every day for the first week.
Store Manager Hayley Brown said: "I'm really excited to be joining Starbucks and leading the team in this beautiful new Drive Thru. We have such a passionate team from the local area who are excited to welcome local customers from June 8."
The new Taunton store will also be signed up to the Too Good To Go scheme - a food app which allows customers to buy surplus food and drink products which are near to their expiry date.
In January, Cobra Coffee won a battle to put up a six-metre-high sign outside the new café, which is near the M5, despite an objection from West Monkton Parish Council over the sign's height and "relevance", according to Somerset County Gazette.
The newspaper reported that Somerset West and Taunton Council gave the green light for the sign, however.
The coffee shop will be accessible to pedestrians as well as cars, with footpaths built around the retail park. It will be open from 6.30am to 7pm Monday to Saturday, and from 7:30am to 6pm on Sundays.
Cobra Coffee operates more than 50 stores in Berkshire, Bristol, Devon, Dorset, Hampshire, Hertfordshire, Kent, Sussex, Surrey and Somerset. In October 2018, it became part of the Southern Co-op family - a large, regional, independent co-operative.
Southern Co-op operates more than 300 food, funeral and Starbucks coffee branches across the south of England. It is owned by its 150,000 members and has an annual turnover of over £490m and has more than 4,000 staff.
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