Starbucks Canada to start selling wine, craft beer and cider in Toronto as it hones in on customer base

TORONTO ? “Permission to Relax” is among four inspirational sayings etched on the stemless Riedel wine glasses Starbucks is using for that debut of its Starbucks Evenings program in Canada.

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It’s a Zen-like sentiment aimed squarely at the same busy customers who stop by the nation’s biggest coffee chain for a daily fix of caffeine, and it is one Rossann Williams hopes they’ll embrace as the business sets to turn on the lights and debut its beer and wine sipping alter ego here in a few days. (The other indulgence-urging wine glass reflections include “Take a minute or Three,” “Breathe In, Drink Out” and “Escape Your Plans.”)

“Many of those who understand the quality inside a nice cup of coffee are the same people who just like a nice glass of vino, and appreciate all the notes and the flavours and the heritage of wines,” Williams, president of the country’s biggest specialty coffee chain, said on the cup of Starbucks ‘reserve’ coffee at a Bloor West Village restaurant in Toronto’s west end where an expanded menu including wine, craft beer and cider will be available from 2 p.m. onward every day, starting Tuesday.

“We already have the shoppers within our stores,” she said. “We are simply extending the type of experience that they can have with this Evenings menu.”

The Canadian openings come more than five years following the U.S.-based pilot project debut of Starbucks Evenings. And while selling wine at a chain that competes with Tim Hortons and Subway was initially regarded with a few skepticism, Starbucks’ European-style caf