The Roastery and Tasting Room will serve as the site for the roasting of the brand’s premium coffee line, Reserve, and is projected to produce 1.4 million pounds of Reserve coffee a year, to be distributed to Starbucks branches across the globe.

More than that, the Tasting Room is intended to give the curious and the connoisseur an inside look at how a coffee bean goes through the roasting process. The 360-degree design, ensures that there are views of the roasting from any angle. When beans are roasted and ready, they will travel in tubes to the coffee bar, where baristas will then create coffees using six different methods: Pour Over, Chemex, French Press, Siphon, Espresso and Clover-brewed coffee.

Howard Schultz, chairman,president and chief executive officer of Starbucks said in a statement:

This Roastery is the fulfillment of a decade-long dream – an homage to our relentless pursuit of coffee innovation that will create for our customers the most immersive, sensory demonstration of how we source, roast and craft the finest coffee from around the world. Everything we’ve ever done has led us to this point. This is the moment of the next generation of Starbucks. 

The Roastery is a signal that Starbucks wants to be known not as the most convenient cup of coffee, but the tastiest too. In a way, it is going back to its origins, when high-quality beans were the heart of the business. 

Starbucks is banking a lot on this new store concept and focus on Reserve. It has plans to open 100 Reserve-only stores in 2015 in cities such as New York, San Francisco, Los Angeles, Washington D.C., and Chicago.

Article courtesy of psfk.com