Starbucks' new upscale cafes that will sell $10 drinks and pizza are totally unrecognizable
The first Starbucks Reserve store will open in West Loop, Illinois next year and a second will open in Seattle. The company plans to open both stores in the second half of 2017.
Eventually, Starbucks says it hopes to open 1,000 of the upscale Reserve cafes around the world. It also has plans to add Reserve Bars, which serve more exotic, small-batch blends, at 20% of its stores globally.
Starbucks wants to open 20 to 30 Roasteries as well. These super-sized tourist-friendly locations serve expensive drinks like the $10 Nitro Cold Brew Float and roast coffee in-house
The Reserve stores will be twice the size of a typical Starbucks, at roughly 3,000 to 4,000 square feet. Locations will attempt to mimic the upscale feel of Starbucks' Seattle Roastery - which has been described as the "Willy Wonka of coffee" - with creative designs, more expensive drinks, and a menu of Princi food made fresh in-house, including pastries, pizza, and booze.
"Premium and upscale" Reserve stores will have "all the bells and whistles as a Roastery," Liz Muller, Starbucks' senior vice president of creative and global design, said at Starbucks' Investor Day on Wednesday.
Starbucks said that each Reserve store is estimated to make roughly $3 million in sales. That's twice as much as the average Starbucks location, and would make the Reserve chain the second most profitable restaurant chain by average sales per unit in the US, trailing only Chick-fil-A at $4 million.
While Starbucks hasn't released any photos of what its Reserve stores will look like, we got a peek at a replica in New York City on Wednesday.
Here's are some baristas at work in the coffee prep area.
Kate Taylor
Expect plenty of showy preparation methods like siphoning, which involves using vapor pressure and a vacuum to brew coffee.
Kate Taylor
The cups will looks totally different as well:
Employee uniforms look pretty classy.
Kate Taylor
Here's what Princi's food, which is currently only available in Europe, looks like.
Princi London
Starbucks hasn't revealed exactly what Princi items will be available at Reserve stores, but they have promised that pizza, sandwiches, and spirits will be on the menu.
Princi London
"Roasteries and Reserve will require us to think differently about food," Cliff Burrows, the group president of the Siren Retail, which oversees the Reserve stores, told investors. "We know we need to have food that is worthy of our coffee, it has to be fresh food."
More premium locations, like the Reserve stores, are key to Starbucks' future. Last week, CEO Howard Schultz said he was stepping down as CEO to focus on the company's Reserve and Roastery brands.
"It's clear to the me that the universal interest in premium retail experiences is not skewed to only the US," Schultz told Business Insider in October. "I think there is a bigger trend here - as companies face the threat of e-commerce and mobile shopping, the burden of responsibility of the bricks and mortar retailers is to create a very immersive, dynamic experience."