Starbucks Roastery Openings

In 2014, Starbucks opened the world’s first Reserve Roastery in Seattle. Over the next five years, then CEO Howard Schultz committed to opening five additional “Disneylands of coffee” as he liked to say. With a very large footprint, The Starbucks Reserve Roastery is often described as a theme park experience, including coffee bars with tastings, cocktail bars, areas to observe the roasting and brewing processes, areas to purchase food, and local artwork throughout. The facilities also roast, package, and ship coffee to stores in their regions. In 2017 my team had the honor of opening the first international Roastery in Shanghai and then Milan in 2018.

Event: Milan Roastery Opening

Starbucks Reserve Roastery opens its first location in Italy inside the historic Poste building in Piazza Cordusio in Milan. Designed as an homage to the Italian espresso culture that inspired Howard Schultz 35 years ago to create the Starbucks Experience, the 2,300-square-meter (25,000 sq. ft.) Reserve Roastery showcases the theater of coffee roasting, brewing and mixology in the epicenter of fashion and culture.

Responsibilities: Manage all photo and video content from opening week events including on-site capture teams, media content distribution, executive interviews, and b-roll collection.

The plans for Thursday night’s opening celebration were up-ended by thunder and lightning storms, but the festivities roared on undeterred until the rain passed. Instead of gathering outdoors in the Piazza Cordusio for an evening of live performances by the world-renowned Milanese opera house La Scala, hundreds of guests crowded inside the Milan Roastery for drinks, food from Princi Bakery, an all-Pavarotti soundtrack and a staircase performance from “The Barber of Seville.”

“I’m really sorry about the rain, but this is what we are accustomed to in Seattle,” said Howard Schultz, chairman emeritus of Starbucks, to the crowd at the Milan Roastery opening celebration. “This truly is a dream come true."

The highly anticipated Milan Roastery is the crown jewel of Starbucks global retail footprint – a place where Italian customers can come to discover the art and science of coffee in a breath-taking environment that is both an homage to the city of Milan and a celebration of everything Starbucks has learned about coffee in its 47-year history.

At the Milan Roastery, heritage and innovation take center stage against a backdrop of stunning design and immersive discovery. As customers enter the building, they are met with a jaw-dropping view that spans every aspect of the Roastery experience. Vibrant colors reflective of the Italian fashion and design community greet each person, and over the course of the day, the space transforms from the light filtering through the glass ceiling. 

At the heart of the environment is a fully-functioning Scolari coffee roaster, manufactured just miles outside of the center of Milan. To the right, customers will find the main bar, where classic espresso beverages mingle with cutting-edge coffee innovation. The wood-fronted bar features fluting, which echoes a motif found in Italian architecture throughout history, and is topped with marble sourced from the world-famous quarries of Tuscany. Upstairs on the mezzanine, customers can discover ArriviamoTM Bar – where mixologists are on hand to create specialty cocktails behind a 10-meter (30-foot)-long marble bar carved from a single block of Calacatta Macchia Vecchia. And finally, to the left, customers will see upon entering a PrinciTM Bakery, complete with a wood-fired oven, built brick by brick, onsite by hand using a crew of masons and artisans.

Event Content: Spirit di Milano

Italian baker Rocco Princi conducts his bakeries like operas. Each one is a theatrical, detailed spectacle of artisanal food – which explains why they were so popular when he opened his first one in Milan in 1986.

“Rocco Princi is an artisan who, at an early age, discovered a love of bread making and through determination as well as an obsession for finding the perfect ingredients, has created an Italian food experience that I think is unparalleled,” said Howard Schultz, executive chairman, Starbucks. “His passion for authentic food and respect for Milanese culture come through in everything he does, and I think our customers are going to fall in love with Princi.” 

Rocco Princi will become the exclusive food pairing in all new Starbucks Reserve Roastery locations including Seattle, Shanghai- opening in December 2017, and Milan in late 2018, followed by New York, Tokyo and Chicago thereafter.

Director/Producer: Luanne Dietz     Cinematographers: Sirio Vanelli, Michele Cherchi Palmieri, and Joshua Trujillo   Editor: Jessey Dearing & Luanne Dietz

Event: Shanghai Roastery Opening

The Shanghai Roastery is an unprecedented feast for the senses being the first fully immersive coffee experience in Asia, with 30,000 square feet of coffee roasting and brewing, Italian baking and exquisite local craftsmanship. The Roastery is the epitome of coffee and retail innovation for Starbucks in China, the company’s fastest-growing market with more than 3,000 stores across 136 cities, unprecedented for any global consumer brand and with immense growth opportunity. Starbucks already has more than 600 stores in Shanghai – the largest number of stores in any city where Starbucks has a presence.

Responsibilities: Manage all photo and video content from opening week events including on-site capture teams, media content distribution, executive interviews, and b-roll collection.

As customers enter the Roastery and step through the front doors of the 2,700-square-meter (30,000-square-foot) building, they’ll be greeted by the stunning sight of a two-story copper cask, adorned with more than 1,000 traditional Chinese chops, or stamps, hand-engraved to narrate the story of Starbucks and coffee. As part of their experience, customers can visit many attractions including one of three coffee bars offering multiple brewing methods, explore specially-crafted teas at the 3-D printed tea bar, enjoy freshly baked Italian artisanal food by Princi, and marvel at the ceiling made of 10,000 handmade wooden hexagon-shaped tiles, inspired by the locking of an espresso shot on an espresso machine.

From the moment Howard walked through the door with his family to see it for the first time to the grand opening of lines around the building, my two weeks in Shanghai bringing this story to life taught me so much about the lovely humans that call the city home as well as their culture, attention to detail and love of all things coffee.

Event Content - Princi Launch Seattle

Starbucks announced the opening of the first Princi bakery and café location in the United States at its Starbucks Reserve Roastery in Seattle in tandem to their International Roastery openings. The Seattle Roastery opened in December 2014 as an homage to coffee, a completely immersive and sensorial space that redefined customers’ expectations of a retail environment. Completing this new customer experience is the introduction of Princi, offering freshly baked Italian food crafted from Rocco Princi’s recipes. 

Director/Producer: Luanne Dietz     Cinematographers: Joshua Trujillo and Jessey Dearing     Editor: Luanne Dietz