Starbucks has a new name: “Charbucks.”
Locals in Taos, New Mexico, gave the nickname to the construction site of a Starbucks that has been the site of two arson attacks.
The developer is again working to build the chain’s first drive-through cafe in the town of roughly 6,400, aiming for a spring 2025 opening date in the town about 90 minutes north of Santa Fe.
The site was set ablaze in August 2023 and then again two months later.
No one was injured.
A couple of chains planning to open in Taos projects reneged after the second fire.
Taos’ town council green-lit the store because it would provide employment and tax revenue, the town’s economic development director said.
Taos has licensed Starbucks outposts in two supermarkets.
“We don’t know who did it, but we loved it,” Todd Lazar, a holistic healer, said at World Cup, Tao’s oldest independent coffee shop that is a mile from the would-be Starbucks.
Starbucks, which has roughly 39,500 cafes worldwide, has faced opposition when it arrived in a number of markets due to fears it would displace existing culture.
Local businesses in Taos have displayed a Starbucks logo with a mermaid that has flames shooting out of the top of it.
“Taos is a dynamic and volatile contact zone between different groups, imperial powers, ecotones,” Sylvia Rodriguez, professor of anthropology at the University of New Mexico, said.
with Post wires