Starbucks will open its first international Starbucks Roastery and Reserve Tasting Room next year in Shanghai, twice as large as the Seattle original.
Starbucks will open its first international Starbucks Roastery and Reserve Tasting Room next year in Shanghai.
It would be the second such roastery and high-end coffee shop to open, following the first in Seattle, which debuted on Capitol Hill in 2014.
A previously announced roastery in New York City is scheduled to open in 2018.
Starbucks’ roastery and tasting room concept is its bid to reconnect with coffee connoisseurs who are very discerning about the origin and characteristics of the coffee bean, the quality of roasting and skill of preparation.
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It also serves neighborhood and everyday Starbucks customers, as well as attracting tourists and others curious about the coffeemaking experience.
“The Starbucks Roastery environment honors coffee innovation as a modern day Willy Wonka experience, where customers are only feet away from the theatre and artistry of our coffee craft,” Starbucks Chariman and CEO Howard Schultz said in a statement.
The Shanghai roastery will be on West Nanjing Road, a busy shopping destination, at the to-be-built mixed-development HKRI Taikoo Hui Project, Starbucks said.
At 30,000 square feet, it will be double the size of the Seattle roastery and tasting room.
China represents a huge market for Starbucks, and it currently has 2,100 stores in 102 cities. The coffeeshops include 55 Starbucks Reserve stores, where customers can buy the small-lot, limited availability, typically single-origin coffees that are roasted at the company’s roasteries.
It is adding 500 stores a year in China and plans to have 3,400 by the end of 2019.