Four New York neighborhoods are getting a glimpse of what’s to come from Starbucks when the company opens its Starbucks Reserve Roastery in the heart of the Meatpacking District in 2018. The Seattle Roastery has inspired new stores located at 10 Waverly Place, 771 Broadway, 1142 Madison Avenue, and 250 Vesey Street at Brookfield Place 2.
Designed to integrate the educational aspects of the Roastery, these locations will now include an immersive coffee bar where the company’s small-lot Reserve coffee can come to life.
“These stores are designed to have coffee craft be the center of conversation, where the coffee bars are interactive and customers can lean in and talk to our partners (employees) about how coffee is brewed on a siphon or made on a Black Eagle (manual espresso machine),” says David Daniels, managing director for Starbucks Design. “The theater of coffee is the first thing you see when you walk in the door and it says, ‘Come here, sit down, learn more.’”
Tailored for customers in each unique market, Starbucks plans to open up to 1,000 Starbucks stores with a Reserve coffee bar experience by the end of 2017. Twelve exist today, located in New York, Chicago, Atlanta, Baltimore, and Boston.
In addition to the siphon or Black Eagle, these locations will also include the company’s full menu including the recent rollout of Nitro Cold Brew taps.
Roasted in its Seattle Roastery, Starbucks Reserve coffees may be experienced in a variety of ways—Clover, pour over, Reserve bar—in 2,000 Starbucks stores in 30 countries.
10 Waverly Place
Starbucks new store at 10 Waverly Place on New York University’s campus is an intimate space in an older building near Washington Square. Here original elements informed the design, including exposed brick walls and a concrete beamed ceiling.
“When we were doing demolition, we uncovered the floor and realized it was the same color terrazzo as the Roastery,” Daniels says. “The site started to tell us what to do.”
The design, led by senior designer Thom Burns, includes other touches that evoke the Roastery, such as felt drapery, leather upholstery and brass accents. Lounge seating is warm and comfortable, combining wood, leather and brass detailing. The store also tips its hat to the milliner who occupied the space long ago, displaying a vintage sign found in the basement during construction.
771 Broadway
At the store at Broadway & 9th, Starbucks designers married an underground urban vibe with a more relaxed coffee-telling story. The L-shaped layout of the store picks up the dynamic of movement along Broadway and then detours into a lounge nook.
Venetian plaster creates texture on the walls, while cast concrete runs along the front of the bar, splashed with a scallop pattern reminiscent of the scales on the tail of Starbucks Siren. Modern industrial brass pendant lights with Edison bulbs hang above siphon brewers, illuminating the same warmth.
Senior designer Boban Jovanovic said, “We tried to catch the fast-paced pedestrian traffic outside and slow them down for a minute. We hope to transform the dynamic outside into something that is purely experiential and different.”
1142 Madison Avenue
Along stately Madison Avenue on the Upper East Side, the new Starbucks store at 1142 Madison Avenue exudes luxury. A boutique hotel was the inspiration for designer Jovanovic, who lined one side of the space with long tufted sofas in soft leather. The amber glow of the siphon at the front of the store beckons customers to enter from the sidewalk.
“This store is home to world travelers, so we wanted to create an atmosphere about coffee exploration,” he says.
Designers created a nook of soft seating with small-framed journal pages displaying notes from coffee journeys. Tommy Taylor, who contributed art pieces to each of these four stores, created a mural of a misty landscape of the Starbucks farm at Hacienda Alsacia.
250 Vesey Street
Starbucks new Brookfield Place 2 store is located in a new development across from One World Trade Center in Battery Park City in lower Manhattan.
Eduardo Mesa, senior designer, said the experience begins at the entry vestibule, which opens into a double-story space. His team created intimacy in the open space with cozy furniture groupings. A warm wood portal frames the main scene while a large hand-painted mural features a bird’s-eye view of a coffee farm, transporting the customers to coffee’s origins. The coffee bar highlights Starbucks Reserve coffees from around the world and the chance to connect over coffee.