Go Inside Starbucks’ Wild New ‘Willy Wonka Factory of Coffee’

On Dec. 5, founder Howard Schultz debuted part of his new strategy for Starbucks: his first flagship “Roastery,” a 15,000 square foot space that is both a coffee roasting facility, and a consumer retail outlet. The place is to coffee what FAO Schwartz is to toys or Dover Street Market is to fashion—retail theatre. You can watch beans being roasted, talk to master grinders, have your drink brewed in front of you in multiple ways, lounge in a coffee library, order a selection of gourmet brews and locally prepared foods. (The entire store is crafted from Made in America materials, by regional artisans.) The architecture says “niche” not mass, as does the merchandise—copies of the New Yorker are scattered alongside top of the line espresso machines and bags of reserve beans marked with their crop year.

Schultz calls it his “Willy Wonka factory of coffee,” and it speaks to the fact that in retail, as in nearly every aspect of the economy these days, there seems to be two directions—up, or down. At the Roastery, a latte made from beans cut and roasted in front of you only minutes before can cost more than $6 bucks. And the truth is that they could probably charge a lot more. There’s little price sensitivity for the upscale consumer these stores—and the smaller “Reserve” stores inspired by the flagship, which will be coming to a town near you in 2015—will target.

For more, click here.