The Shanghai Roastery joins more than 600 Starbucks stores in the city, and includes an Augmented Reality guide to the store powered by e-commerce giant, Alibaba.
When you discover that Starbucks opens a coffee shop every 15 hours in China – the country being its fastest growing market with 3,000 outlets across 136 cities – it won’t surprise you that the world’s best known coffee shop brand has opened its second roastery, it’s largest and most audacious venue to date, on Shanghai’s Nanjing Road.
The Shanghai Roastery joins more than 600 Starbucks stores in the city, and includes an Augmented Reality guide to the store powered by e-commerce giant, Alibaba.
The AR interactive guide will explain about the three coffee experience bars, one the longest Starbucks in the world at an auspicious 88 feet (28.6 metres) and crafted by a Chinese artisan.
In this, the first Reserve Roastery in China, a giant copper cask is a copy of the one found in Starbucks Seattle. Feeding the bars with freshly roasted coffee, it stands two storeys tall and is decorated with more than 1,000 hand-engraved Chinese seals reflecting local culture and the Starbucks story.
The small-lot Reserve coffee, sourced from over 30 countries including Yunnan, will be roasted by experienced roasters training up locals.
Baristas will handcraft rare, small-lot coffees using a number of brewing methods. The Yunnan coffee is a collaboration between farmers, government and China Starbucks Farmer Support Centre resulting in an ‘In China, For China’ product.
The company is dedicated to making charitable donations to improve the lives of Yunnan farmers and their families.
Snacks? Sure. The Roastery brings the first Italian Princi bakery and café to Asia, with 80 items baked fresh onsite.