Starbucks Reserve is a program by the international coffeehouse chain Starbucks. Also part of the program are 43 coffee bars preparing Starbucks Reserve products, starbucks drinks names Starbucks considers its rarest and best-quality coffees, usually single-origin coffees.
The program began as Starbucks desired to compete in the high-end coffee market, competing against premium coffee retailers like Stumptown Coffee Roasters, Dillanos Coffee Roasters and Blue Bottle Coffee. Starbucks began its Starbucks Reserve program in 2010 through online sales and a small number of its retail locations, selling small-batch arabica coffees. Later, the company opened its first Reserve location, a three-story store in Latin America, solely selling Colombian coffee. The first Starbucks Reserve roastery opened in December 2014 in Seattle. Starbucks Reserve includes three different types of locations: the “Starbucks Reserve Roastery”, the “Reserve Bar”, and the “Reserve Store”. Reserve Bars are traditional Starbucks locations that sell some Starbucks Reserve products, supplied by a regional roastery.
There are 43 locations, all of which include the regular Starbucks menu, and also have a coffee bar for a similar experience to the coffee bars in the roasteries. There are currently four Reserve Stores in operation, with one located in Starbucks’ headquarters, Starbucks Center, in Seattle. The remaining three stores are located in New York, Naperville, and Shanghai. These stores sell merchandise, food and drink such as Reserve Coffee, Princi food items, and locally-unique merchandise similar to that of the roasteries.
The first Starbucks Reserve roastery opened in December 2014 in the Capitol Hill neighborhood of Seattle. The roastery in Shanghai, China, is located in the HKRI Taikoo Hui mixed-use development, on the luxury shopping strip Nanjing Road. It opened in December 2017 and was the largest Starbucks location in the world at that time, since surpassed by the Chicago roastery. The Shanghai roastery has a roasting facility, three coffee bars, a Teavana tea bar, and an augmented reality feature designed by Alibaba: information about coffees and the roasting process viewable by opening the company’s Taobao app and pointing it in different places. The building sits in the Piazza Cordusio, a plaza in the center of the city.