I must say it’s easy to think that small is good and big is bad. For some reasons it “feels” right. Starbucks is so “everywhere” that it looks like the fast food of coffee. With so many small local organic gluten free hand made slow drip coffee shops around the corner the 3rd place comparison becomes even more tough.
So, long story short, I had an opportunity to visit Starbuck’s HQ in Seattle.
I visited their Roastery in Seattle already (and more recently the Roastery of Milano and NY). It’s their “Willy Wonka” of coffee if you want. A must go if you’re nearby. Not to compare with their “green points” (super small Starbucks). A form of coffee magic experience.
Back to the HQ. The building from outside is a pretty huge block. You can’t tell it’s anything Starbucks until you see on top of the building the green mermaid!
I’ll put it straight, it was an unforgettable coffee experience.
The design of the building makes it a pretty fluid space across all floors and there’s hardly any single spot where you would not say: “I’m in a coffee place”. There’s coffee everywhere, workshop where people are invited to learn and taste new coffees or test equipment everyday, Starbucks coffee inside Starbuck’s HQ (if you follow me), inspiring quotes from Schultz, …..You learn when the mermaid was redesigned to cover her boops,… (Now it’s not even written Starbuck’ s on their logo… just like Nike only need a swoosh.)
They took us on what they call “the brand walk”. It takes you up and down, left, right and center in the building, through offices and coffee shops along a company timeline. Actually a mix of company, brand, design and coffee culture milestones. For visitors but also for all employee.
You can see that timeline in 10m “short format” in the Roastery of Milano.
We were invited to their coffee quality lab. There were literally hundreds of coffee glasses on a table being tested (“spooned”) by baristas, top baristas. By the time I realized we had around us some of the best experts in coffee, winners of international coffee competitions, I was already testing my 25th coffee and it felt very exciting. In this place each and every lot of coffee going to any Starbucks in the world is tasted for release. Spooning-Spitting-Spooning-Spitting… learning.
One of their barista then prepared a coffee for us starting from the same roasted beans but brewed using different processes: Espresso, French drip, Vacuum,…. And I must say it was a hell of a difference.
There’s a lot in common between beer and coffee (and I’m not just saying that because they now steal all our vocabulary: brewing, cold brew, foam, draft,…) but this opened my eyes (literally, caffeine helping) to something that is very different between the 2. Brewers can control a lot when it comes to quality. I mean, until it leaves the brewery you have full control. Then you hope that the bottle or can will be stored cold, poured in a clean glass and consumed as soon as possible for freshness. In coffee, when the beans are leaving the roastery, everything can still go wrong, even with the best coffee: the grinding quality, the quality of the water, the temperature of the water, the duration of the infusion, the quantity used to make a cup, how clean the mill, the coffee machine, the cup…..
I met extremely passionate people and experts and a cup from Starbucks will never taste the same for me. People in love with coffee. Yeah it may sound corporat-ish,… (and they are a big corporation right…) but I can tell coffee is in their heart.
When I meet baristas… I want to be a barista
