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Hold on to your mugs: On December 6, Starbucks will open a new location in Shanghai. But this isn’t your run-of-the-mill ’bucks: This coffee shop (technically a Reserve Roastery) is the largest Starbucks the world has ever seen.
Measuring 30,000 square feet, it’s the second Reserve Roastery in the world, after Starbucks’s inaugural one in Seattle. It’s also the first “fully immersive coffee experience in Asia,” according to a statement from the company. What, exactly, does that mean? Well, for one, there’s a light jade, 3-D-printed tea bar (stay tuned for exactly what that means). Then, visitors can use a special app by Alibaba to point their phones at objects around the Roastery and “bring to life information about the Starbucks bean-to-cup story” and “share details of the coffee bars, brewing methods, as well as other not-to-be-missed unique online experiences.” Frequent app users will get virtual badges, and once they get them all, a custom roaster filter to share on social media.
Some of the other showstopping features? A two-story copper cask hand-engraved with 1,000 Chinese stamps, a ceiling made of 10,000 handmade wooden hexagon-shaped tiles, three coffee bars, 80 different menu options, a culinary concierge, and some of the rarest brews in the world.
To sum it up: It’s like Eataly but for coffee. Get a preview of the experience, above.