Starbucks Corp. is taking its Evolution Fresh juice nationwide and stocking a new line of snack bars called Evolution Harvest through a partnership with retailer Whole Foods Market Inc. 
 
 By the end of the year, Starbucks said Tuesday, it expects Evolution Fresh to be in about 8,000 U.S. cafes and grocery stores. 
 
 Starbucks has been working to... ||||| NEW YORK Starbucks Coffee Company, which has exported coffee beans from Colombia for more than four decades, plans to open its first café in the Andean country in 2014 and serve only locally-grown coffee. 
 
 The world's biggest coffee chain hopes to open at least 50 coffee shops in cities across Colombia in the next five years, starting in the capital Bogota. 
 
 The announcement by the Seattle based-firm coincided with protests by local coffee growers who are demanding the government provide more aid to counter low global prices and cheap imports hitting the world's biggest producer of washed arabica beans. 
 
 "We've had great success in Latin American and it's well overdue for us to open up in Colombia," Starbucks Chief Executive Howard Schultz told Reuters in an interview, adding that he hoped to open at least six stores in the first year. 
 
 A military crackdown on drug-funded insurgent groups has made Colombia more attractive to foreign firms once fearful of investing in the nation when the conflict between Marxist FARC rebels and the government was at its height. 
 
 In addition to opening stores, Starbucks said it would partner with the United States Agency for International Development (USAID) and invest a joint $3 million in a plan to help 25,000 farmers in conflict-hit areas of Colombia increase coffee yields. 
 
 Starbucks' new coffee shops will be run by a joint venture between Mexican restaurant firm Alsea, which operates more than 500 Starbucks stores in Latin America, and Colcafe, a subsidiary of Grupo Nutresa, the fourth-largest Colombian food company. 
 
 Colcafe helped Starbucks develop Via, its instant coffee product, launched in 2008. The Via manufacturing business, Starbucks' only roasting facility in Colombia, will be expanded to roast espresso blends and packaged coffee for sale in the country. 
 
 "We want to sell Colombian coffee in Colombia," said Craig Russell, Starbucks' senior vice president of global coffee. 
 
 The USAID-Starbucks program will be directed at farmers in Antioquia, Tolima, Huila and Cauca, rich coffee-growing areas where there is still a FARC presence. 
 
 A major aim of the initiative is to reduce "extreme poverty, which is still a reality for almost all of these small-scale coffee growers that have barely one hectare (2.5 acres) of land," said USAID chief Raj Shah. 
 
 Carlos Piedrahita, head of Nutresa, said Starbucks' entrance into Colombia's coffee shop market would mean investment and jobs. 
 
 "This means more demand for our national produce," said Piedrahita, speaking at a press conference in Bogota alongside Schultz. 
 
 Starbucks said its research suggests the cost of the chain's beverages, known for being relatively expensive around the world, won't deter consumers. The company declined to reveal its Colombia pricing, citing competitiveness. 
 
 Schultz said Starbucks would not undercut the country's farmer-owned Juan Valdez chain and probably charge a little more to create Starbucks "home-from-home" lounge environment. He emphasized the company wanted to make a "respectful" entry into a country that has been a key coffee supplier for many years. 
 
 (Additional reporting by Lesley Wroughton in Washington DC and Peter Murphy in Bogota; editing by Andrew Hay) ||||| After buying coffee from Colombia for almost half a century, Starbucks Corp. (SBUX) is finally opening a cafe there, part of its accelerating expansion in Latin America. 
 
 The world’s largest coffee-shop operator will open a cafe in Bogota in the first half of next year and then five more locations later in 2014, Chief Executive Officer Howard Schultz said in a telephone interview. The stores will be operated through a joint venture between Alsea SAB (ALSEA*) and Grupo Nutresa SA (NUTRESA), and will sell locally sourced and roasted espresso and coffee. 
 
 “This is long overdue,” Schultz said. “There is tremendous enthusiasm as we talk to people and walk the streets -- most of these Colombian people we talked to have consumed Starbucks coffee somewhere else.” 
 
 It would be disappointing if Starbucks didn’t have 50 stores in Colombia in five years, Schultz said at a press event in Bogota today. 
 
 Starbucks is expanding to countries with growing middle classes to help boost sales. The Seattle-based company, which has about 8,000 cafes outside the U.S., opened its first locations in India in 2012 and Vietnam this year. In Colombia, Starbucks will compete with chains such as Juan Valdez Cafe, whose parent company Procafecol SA was created in 2002 by the Colombian Coffee Growers Federation. 
 
 Alsea, based in Mexico City, earlier this year acquired parts of Starbucks Argentina and Chile that it didn’t already own. Alsea, which operates Domino’s Pizza Inc. (DPZ) and Burger King Worldwide Inc. (BKW) stores in Latin America, will have a 70 percent stake in Starbucks operations in Colombia. Grupo Nutresa, based in Medellin, Colombia, is the nation’s largest publicly traded food company. 
 
 USAID Agreement 
 
 Starbucks also is forming a pact with the U.S. Agency for International Development to invest $3 million to secure coffee quality and supply in certain regions of Colombia. Starbucks and USAID are each investing $1.5 million during the next three years for research to help small-plot coffee farmers in Colombia. The money will go to Starbucks’s farmer support center in Manizales to pay for agronomists to analyze soil and advise growers on factors that affect yield, such as climate, pests and fertilizers. 
 
 Colombia has been Starbucks’s largest or second-largest coffee-bean supplier in its 42-year history, Schultz said during an earlier interview. In 2012, Starbucks bought about 545 million pounds of coffee from 29 countries, about 27 percent more than it bought the previous year, according to the company’s annual global responsibility report. 
 
 Recently, the company has invested in countries where it buys beans to help secure supply and consistent quality as it opens more locations. Earlier this year, Starbucks bought a farm in Costa Rica to experiment with coffee varieties and expand its grower-support program. 
 
 Farmer Support 
 
 Starbucks opened its first farmer support center in 2004 in Costa Rica. Last year, it opened branches in Colombia and China for agronomists to help local coffee growers improve the quality and size of their harvests. The cafe operator has said it wants to sell all ethically sourced coffee by 2015. 
 
 USAID has initiated other projects to help areas in Colombia affected by internal conflict, drug trafficking and violence. Last year, the government agency began working on a program to increase access to renewable energy in the South American nation. 
 
 Starbucks, which has about 19,200 stores worldwide, has gained 34 percent this year. The Standard & Poor’s 500 Index has advanced 16 percent. 
 
 To contact the reporter on this story: Leslie Patton in Chicago at lpatton5@bloomberg.net 
 
 To contact the editor responsible for this story: Robin Ajello at rajello@bloomberg.net
– For 42 years, Starbucks has been exporting coffee beans from Colombia; now, it's finally planning to sell the resulting product in the country. Next year, the coffee chain will open its first Colombian store in Bogota, and it intends to have 50 stores in the country—the biggest producer of washed arabica beans on the planet, and Starbucks' No. 1 or No. 2 supplier during the chain's entire history—within five years, Bloomberg reports. "We've had great success in Latin America and it's well overdue for us to open up in Colombia," says CEO Howard Schultz. Starbucks says it won't undercut Juan Valdez, a Colombian chain owned by farmers, and will instead likely have slightly higher prices, Reuters reports. Meanwhile, the company is also working with USAID: Together, the organizations will contribute $3 million to help the country's small-plot coffee farmers. The program hopes to fight "extreme poverty, which is still a reality for almost all of these small-scale coffee growers that have barely (2.5 acres) of land," says the head of the agency. In other Starbucks-is-everywhere news, the Wall Street Journal reports that, beginning today, Whole Foods will stock Starbucks' Evolution Fresh juices and Evolution Harvest snack bars. (Fact that may surprise: Starbucks is far from the No. 1 coffee brand in America.)