Special hospitality concept: Starbucks Reserve Roastery (NY)
I’m often asked: “What are truly great hospitality concepts?” Here’s my answer! Every week, I take you to the most remarkable restaurants, bars and hotels at home and abroad. This time: the dazzling Starbucks Reserve Roastery in New York.
Do you want a next level coffee experience and are you going to be in New York soon? Then the Starbucks Reserve Roastery that opened last year in the trendy Meatpacking District is just the place for you. Now I can hear you thinking: “But I can also just buy a caramel frappuccino or one of those autumnal pumpkin spice lattes at a Starbucks in the Netherlands, right?” True. But visiting a Starbucks Reserve Roastery (there are currently five worldwide) is not the same. At all. This is a mini theme park, a place where you discover the art and science of ‘black gold’.
Design temple
Let me start with the breathtaking interior. The New York design temple, measuring over 2,000 square metres (!), is a feast for the eyes. The absolute eye-catcher is the ‘wavy’, vibrant and colourful ceiling, fitted with meat hooks (holding bags of green beans, ready to be roasted) and copper pipes (which transport freshly roasted coffee beans to the correct bar with a tinkling sound). Those industrial meat hooks are also a particularly apt reference to the über-cool Meatpacking District’s past as a meatpacking area.
Coffee cocktails
The coffee is roasted right there on the floor by the so-called ‘Starbucks Master Roasters’. At the two coffee bars, it becomes clear that baristas, or better yet: coffee masters, know exactly what to do with those incredibly fresh beans. The menu at both the large Main Bar and the innovative Experience Bar is impressive, as is the range of brewing techniques.
Also worth doing: head to the sixteen-metre-long Arriviamo Bar on the first floor, inspired by the Italian aperitivo tradition. Renowned mixologist Julia Momose created a menu of increasingly popular coffee and tea cocktails, including alcohol-free options. How about the Nocino Notte, with cold-brewed coffee, gin and black truffle salt? With this Arriviamo Bar, Starbucks Reserve Roastery brings together the once-separate worlds of baristas and bartenders. Oh, and are you hungry? No worries. At the renowned Italian boutique bakery Princi, also found at this location, chefs make fresh breads, pizzas, desserts and more.
Five locations
Besides New York, Starbucks Reserve Roastery can be found in Seattle, Shanghai, Milan and Tokyo, and in November it will open a location measuring no less than 4,000 square metres in Chicago.
StarbucksReserve.com, 61at 9th Avenue in New York.
Iris Kranenburg is editor-in-chief of hospitality trade magazine Entree Magazine and chair of the jury for the annual Entree Awards (industry awards for the best new bars, restaurants and hotels in the Netherlands).
Image: Matthew Glac/Starbucks
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