World's largest Starbucks opens in Shanghai 全球最大星巴克落户上海引来马云参观

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Starbucks once made waves with the indulgent sizes of some of its drinks, such as the Trenta, which contains a staggering 31 ounces of joe. Now, as part of the company’s aggressive expansion in China, the Seattle-based coffee retailer opened its largest store in the world: a nearly 30,000-square foot compound that does much more than simply serve coffee.

Jack Ma visited the new Starbucks Reserve Roastery on Dec. 5.

The new Starbucks Reserve Roastery, which opened Tuesday in Shanghai, is the first non-U.S. location of a new series of shops designed to offer a more “immersive” experience for coffee lovers, according to Starbucks. The first such roastery, which opened in Seattle in 2014, is about half its size.

A barista makes a siphon brew in the new Starbucks Roastery in Shanghai on Dec. 1.

The Shanghai location is the world’s largest Starbucks. It includes three coffee bars, one of which clocks in at 88 feet long — the chain’s longest to date. The coffee bars will serve cups made from beans grown in China’s Pu’er in Yunnan Province. A two-story, 40-ton copper cask towers over the store, refilling the coffee bars’ various silos.

Green coffee is loaded in the new Starbucks Roastery in Shanghai, on Dec.1.

As a nod to the local beverage of choice, it also includes a tea bar made from 3D printed materials, and an in-house bakery employing more than 30 Chinese bakers and chefs, the company stated.

The experience seems curated to keep people mulling about the store. It is the first Starbucks location to integrate augmented reality, which refers to technology that combines real-world surroundings with tech, in this case the customers’ smartphones. They can point their phones at various spots around the cavernous room to learn about the coffee brewing process.

The world’s biggest Starbucks includes three coffee bars.

China might seem like an odd place to open the world’s biggest and arguably flashily Starbucks, given the country’s traditional warm beverage has long been tea, not coffee. And, in fact, Starbucks CEO Howard Schultz said the company struggled when it opened its first store in China in 1999.

“We had to educate and teach many Chinese about what coffee was — the coffee ritual, what a latte was,” said Schultz. “So in the early years, we did not make money.”

But now, the company is expanding faster than frothed milk. Since 2016, it has been on pace to open an average of one new store every day for five years. In 2021, the company plans to have almost 5,000 stores across the country. For comparison, there were more than 11,100 Starbucks in America in 2012.

“When people ask me how much can you really grow in China, I don’t really know what the answer is, but I do believe it’s going to be larger than the U.S.,” said Schultz.

The company’s practices in China haven’t been free of criticism. In 2014, reports came out that a latte cost nearly a dollar more in China than in the United States, even though the U.S. boasted a per capita income that was 5½ times China’s. The company defended its pricing structure, and has not adjusted it.

“When you look at our pricing structure, we look at it market by market. It’s based on our true cost of running our business in China and or any market that we operate,” said John Culver, group president at Starbucks Coffee China and Asia Pacific.

The higher prices don’t seem to have driven away many customers. Over the past year, sales in China grew by seven percent compared to a three percent in the rest of the word.

Some believe that’s why the company chose to open the new splashy location in Shanghai.

“This is a show store,” said John Gordon, a restaurant analyst at Pacific Management Consulting, “The point is to be in a highly, highly visible, touristy [area] where there’s foot traffic, offices and urban housing in order to promote the brand.

The store’s boasting rights as the world’s largest won’t last long, though. The company plans to open a 43,000 square foot location on Chicago’s Michigan Avenue in 2019.

全球最大星巴克落户上海 

星巴克公司在美国以外的首家“臻选咖啡烘焙工坊”周二在上海正式开业。

这家“超级咖啡店”位于世界最繁华商圈之一的南京西路上，也是星巴克在全球推出的第二家“臻选咖啡烘焙工坊”。上海的这家新店面积达3万平方英尺（约合2787平米），与传统咖啡店相比，这家特大型咖啡店更像一个咖啡爱好者的朝圣之地。

这将是星巴克在2020年之前计划开设的5家“臻选咖啡烘焙工坊”之一，明年还将在米兰和纽约开设两家，位于东京和芝加哥的两家将于2019年开业。

新的“臻选咖啡烘焙工坊”的设计是专为星巴克的中国客户创造，不会在其他地方重复。其中一个关键的设计是天花板，它由1万个手工制作的木制六角形瓷砖组成。星巴克表示，这一造型的灵感是从意大利浓咖啡机中激发的。

上海“臻选咖啡烘焙工坊”有三个咖啡体验吧，其中一个吧台的长度达到惊人的88英尺（约合26.8米），是全球最长的星巴克咖啡吧台。

这家新店还将设有星巴克在中国的首个Teavana茶吧，该茶吧完全由3-D打印的可回收材料建造。

上月刚刚在西雅图“臻选咖啡烘焙工坊”推出的Princi烘培坊也将出现在上海店内，30多名富有经验的中国面点师和厨师每天将为顾客现场制作80多种新鲜的烘培食品。

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