Starbucks Announces Opening of Korea's First 'Pet-Friendly Store'

Starbucks Korea announced on the 13th that it plans to open the country's first 'pet-friendly store' within this year.

Last January, pet dogs are sitting in the pet park established at Starbucks The Bukhangang R branch.
[Photo by Starbucks]

Starbucks recently applied for a 'regulatory sandbox' with the Ministry of Trade, Industry and Energy to ease regulations allowing customers to enter food and beverage establishments, such as cafes, accompanied by their pets and consume food and drinks. The regulatory sandbox is a system that grants experimental exemptions from existing regulations under certain conditions to enable trials of new industries and technologies, and then decides whether to improve the regulations based on the results.

According to the current Enforcement Rules of the Food Sanitation Act, food and beverage establishments such as cafes that intend to operate businesses involving the entry, display, or breeding of animals must have a separate space separated from the main business area. Although there is a growing trend of cafes and restaurants allowing pets in large cafes on the outskirts of the metropolitan area, most of these do not comply with current laws.

The Ministry of Trade, Industry and Energy has begun discussions on the regulatory sandbox experimental exemption project applied for by Starbucks. It is known that the review and notification process, including verification by the Ministry of Food and Drug Safety, usually takes about five months to decide the final approval. Once approved, the operation can be conducted temporarily for 24 months and can be extended once for a total of 48 months.

Previously, Starbucks' pet-friendly store 'Starbucks The Bukhangang R Branch,' which opened in January last year, has a 100-pyeong (approximately 330 square meters) pet park space where customers can enjoy time with their pets, but pets are not allowed inside the cafe itself. However, there is a designated space where pets can wait separately for orders.

Because of this, Starbucks has reportedly received continuous requests from customers who want to freely use cafes with their pets to create stores that allow pet companionship.

At Starbucks' pet-friendly stores, they plan to sell pet-exclusive beverages such as 'Puppuccino,' which is sold at Starbucks in the United States, along with various snacks and pet-exclusive goods like backpacks.

A Starbucks representative said, "We plan to introduce Starbucks' first pet-friendly store in Guri, Gyeonggi Province, as early as September," adding, "Afterwards, we plan to expand pet-friendly stores to areas outside Seoul such as Yangpyeong and Namyangju."