Last night I decided to hop over to Capitol Hill to check out the new Starbucks Reserve Roastery & Tasting Room. I thought everyone might enjoy a little trip report, so here goes!
Before visiting you have to put yourself in the right mindset: this isn't meant to be a quaint pretentious coffee shop on the street corner of a trendy neighbourhood. As the name suggests it's a "roastery" and tasting room. It's the place for a massive international coffee company to talk coffee with the vast swath of humanity that has a morning cup of SBUX on the way to work every morning. It's kinda like going to a cross between a microbrewery tour and an Anheuser-Busch brewery tour: a peek inside coffee supported by the massive corporate machinery of Starbucks, but on an intimate scale.
The Space The space is stunning: even from the outside at night it glows with energy and makes you want to come in and see what on earth is going on. In case you missed the posts over the weekend the
Seattle Times has excellent photos, and yet the photos don't do the space justice. Brass accents are everywhere. Coffee is on display at every turn. The roaster for their Reserve coffees is center stage and people roasting are there and approachable (more on that below). There's a big bar in the middle of the space where you can pull up a chair, pub-style, and chat with baristas while they tell you about available coffees, and plenty of little tables and nooks to hide and enjoy your beverage.
The space is noisy: you won't stay here and work on your blog posts for hours. The train station flip board changes constantly to announce the beans currently on tap. The roasted beans swoosh overhead in the fancy pneumatic tubes. Grinders whirr. Even so this isn't bad: it fills the space with life and makes it a place where you want to talk and ask questions rather than being a library where you sit by yourself and ponder.
The space is Starbucks: make no mistake, this is a corporate store. The level of fit and finish in the design of the space is the product of millions of dollars of investment and it shows. Branding, while subtle, is everywhere. The Reserve logo makes appearances at every turn, never in-your-face, but always a reminder that Reserve is Starbucks's premier brand of bean.
Sitting at the bar and watching the things happening there are definitely a few issues with the space from an operational standpoint. There aren't enough timers for the baristas so they're using timers on their phones. The IT department clearly didn't get the design memo and issued the ugliest, ruggedized, point-of-sale mobile terminals possible. While the terminals are mobile there's nowhere to put them on the bar so baristas have to rest them on top of grinders or mugs. The baristas are still getting used to the bar layout, and I get the sense the layout is designed for looks rather than barista function. The cool train board displaying the different coffees is off in the corner and poorly lit. But these are standard little glitches for any new space and I'm sure they'll get worked out over time.
The Baristas Starbucks touted that baristas came from all over to work at the store and it's true. Everyone has a nametag with their home location, and many (most? all?) were nominated by district managers and moved to Seattle specifically for the store. They all love coffee as much as we do, and are happy to talk beans, brewing methods, etc. while you sit at the bar. Want a pour-over? No problem. Clover? Yup. Chemex? They can do that too.
Mad respect to the baristas who've dealt with the opening crush. The store is apparently doing 2,000 cups of coffee a day, all brewed by hand, one at a time.
Chatting with the baristas you are again reminded this is Starbucks, and Starbucks is a giant corporation. The tasting room is staffed with people that know customer service, how to engage with people, and most importantly how to share the Starbucks messaging :) And they do know the Starbucks messaging! They can easily talk about why the store was located in Capitol Hill, their desire to bring people to the hill as a destination and have them experience all the area has to offer (including competing coffee roasters). It's kind of cute to hear the transplants talk about the store's connection to the original location in "Pike's Place Market". Apparently the messaging training still has some kinks to work out *grin*.
One quick note about the roasters since there isn't a better place to put it in this review: the employees doing the actual bean roasting in the space are amazingly accessible. They are right there, next to the roasting machines, doing their thing and totally willing to talk about their craft. This is again clearly the intent of the space: it's about educating the world of random coffee drinkers about coffee, and the people working the roasters are expected to be educators as well.
The Coffee I doubt any of the folks reading
/coffee will be surprised by what the coffee is like here. This is a Starbucks after all and the beans are roasted to Starbucks standard: "past 2nd pop" as my barista told me yesterday. They are not ashamed of this. Starbucks roasts dark, and if you don't like it you can go across the street to Victrola.
I personally am nowhere near the coffee connoisseur as others in this subreddit. I like some coffees, I don't like other coffees, and I can sometimes taste notes of a random fruit or chocolate, but that's about it. If I remember right there were six different beans available for coffee last night. I went with the Micro Blend No. 11, which if I recall was 70% Guatamala and 30% Ethiopia Yirgacheffe, done in a Clover. It was just ok. I didn't pick up any of the Yirgacheffe flavours, and it was of course a dark roast :) I'd go again and try something else next time.
Serious Pie Oops, forgot to mention Serious Pie. They share a space with the new roastery. I had a personal-sized pizza with water. It cost me, including tax and tip, $21. That's all you need to know.
tl;dr It's beautiful. It's Starbucks. It doesn't matter, you should go anyway.
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