Starbucks Reserve, Seattle

Starbucks is a famously innovative brand that blazed a trail in third-wave coffee and became an early adopter of retail and loyalty technology – its homegrown app is the most popular mobile payment app globally.

Its newest offer is its premium Reserve retail format, inaugurated at Starbucks HQ in Seattle. Spanning a floor of the building, the new cafe puts the craft of coffee on display. It offers the full Seattle Reserve Roastery menu along with new cold brew and espresso items and a mixology bar serving Aperitivo.

The Starbucks Reserve store brings the best of coffee craft into a space with both energy and moments of intimacy.

The cavernous space is designed in an open-plan, marketplace style that allows customers to place their orders at the solid wood bar and then gather around community tables and lounge areas; an open Princi kitchen adds theatre.

Dark timber, leather and metallic highlights including two floor-to-ceiling fireplaces give the cafe a sumptuous, refined vibe. A copper art installation crafted from some 3,700 Starbucks Reserve Cards shimmers on the back wall; inset amber glass and mirror flecks lend a touch of lustre to the polished concrete floors.

In keeping with the space’s innovative history, an on-site meeting room is available for tasting events and new product development.

The new store is part of a Starbucks premiumisation effort, which will see the expansion of its Roasteries worldwide, as well as the conversion of some 20-30% of its existing cafes into Reserve stores.