Starbucks opens on Pamplico Highway
By: Matthew Christian
FLORENCE, S.C. – Coffee lovers in Florence have a new place to get a cup of joe.
Florence’s newest Starbucks opened Monday morning in a new shopping plaza across from the main campus of Carolinas Hospital System on Pamplico Highway.
“It’s extremely exciting for me to be open today,” said Jaime Owle, the store manager. “We’re slower than we’d like to be, because we didn’t open on Friday as scheduled.”
Owle added that before coming to the Pamplico Highway store, he served as a store manager of the Five Points Starbucks. He said he trained the manager to take over the store. He also said he wanted the challenge of opening a new store.
Before working at Starbucks, he served as a meat department manager at a Publix.
“I’m super-excited to be here,” Owle said. “I’m super-excited about the location. Once we get going, I know that we’ll really, really generate some business in this location.”
Owle also said that the location was chosen because of the proximity of the hospital as well as the ongoing development in that southeastern area of Florence.
Starbucks was founded in 1971 in Seattle. It expanded from six stores in the Seattle area in the 1980s after being purchased by former manager Howard Schultz. Schultz served as the chief executive officer of Starbucks from 1986-2000 and 2008-2017. The chain now has over 28,000 locations around the world.
