On any vineyard tour, you can see where the grapes are mashed and bottles are corked, and then finish with a drink. Now coffee fiends can sample the same joy built around their favourite beverage.
On Friday, Starbucks opened a 15,000 sq ft temple of coffee in its hometown of Seattle, as a draw for tourists but also a signal that for all its commercial muscle, the company still has designs on an artisanal identity.
The Starbucks Reserve Roastery and Tasting Room, which bears the logo of the company’s fanciest coffee instead of its corporate logo, is not artisanal in scale. The space is outfitted with a large bean-roasting machine, gleaming copper pipes, a tasting room and coffee-colored leather couches.
“Everything we’ve ever done has led us to this point,” Starbucks CEO Howard Schultz said in a statement. The company calls the new facility an “interactive retail environment”, and plans to book it for weddings and other private events.
The glass-paneled outlet is in Seattle’s Capitol Hill neighborhood, home to hipsters and regional small-scale coffee institutions like Caffé Vita. It is nine blocks from the first Starbucks store, which opened in 1971 and continues to attracts crowds of tourists, who now have a second itinerary option.
That’s if they don’t run out of beans. Espresso, lattes and cappuccinos at the new coffee palace cost between $3 to $6.50, while the store’s top blends are priced at $8 for the 32 fl oz size.
Starbucks says it plans to open 100 such specialty locations in the next five years, with the first sites in Chicago, Los Angeles, New York, San Francisco and Washington DC. A store is also set to open in Asia in 2016.
Seattle mayor Ed Murray issued a proclamation that 5 December, the day of the grand opening, was to be “Starbucks Reserve Roastery Day” in the city. Murray touted the company’s contributions to the local economy and sustainability efforts.
The company’s most recent quarterly results show that revenue increased 10% in the third quarter of 2014 to $4.18bn from $3.8bn in the third quarter of 2013.
