American Giant Starbucks Coffee will bring the format to the fast-growing Russian market Starbucks Reserve Bar.
The first and only establishment of the premium Starbucks chain will open in Moscow. Today there are forty-five establishments under the Starbucks Reserve Bar brand in the world: 33 in the US, 5 in Japan, 4 in Canada, and one each in Great Britain, Chile and Mexico. Reserve drinks are also available in a limited format at 1,500 Starbucks locations worldwide.
The menu of the first Starbucks Reserve Bar in Moscow will feature rare coffees of their own roasting, author's drinks based on espresso and alternative ways of brewing coffee. Currently the reserve category drinks are available only in three coffee houses in Moscow (Okhotny Ryad, 2; Arbat, 19; Aeroporta Passage, 8) and at one address in St. Petersburg - Nevsky Prospect, 55. To celebrate the upcoming launch of the first premium bar in Moscow, Starbucks has released a special drink, Neglinnaya 15, which is a blend of espresso, milk, chocolate and mint.
What is Starbucks' Reserve Bar and Reserve Roastery?
Unlike the full-scale chain of coffee shops around the world, Starbucks Reserve Bar implies a more complete immersion in the atmosphere of a perfect cup of coffee. Firstly, it is a selection of the rarest and most unusual types of coffee. And secondly, it is a place where you can enjoy a "handmade" drink and learn all the intricacies of its preparation from the barista. The Starbucks Reserve Bar serves beverages made from their own roasted beans.
The first flagship Starbucks Reserve Roastery, combining a coffee shop with a roastery, opened in Seattle in late 2014. In 2017, the format was introduced to the Chinese market, and in 2018 Starbucks opened unique in scale and beauty, a coffee shop with a roastery in the center of Milan. In the past there has been an expansion of the premium format in Tokyo, and Roastery also premiered in New York.
Reserve Roastery is 10-15 times bigger in format than a regular coffee shop. In each roasting room you can spend hours wandering around like a huge, state-of-the-art museum of the coffee industry, learning more about the roasting or brewing process, or taking part in a free tasting. Unlike traditional coffee shops and regular Reserve Bars, Starbucks Roastery serves signature cocktails and non-alcoholic drinks based on Reserve beans and Teavana tea, as well as wines and traditional cocktails. In various locations, Reserve Bar combines ice cream bars, tea tasting rooms, pizza parlors, bakeries and other interesting formats with coffee shops.
The menu offers both traditional espresso, cappuccino, latte and company and unique drinks that cannot be tasted anywhere else in the world: for example Cardamon Long Black (two ristretto shots, cardamom syrup and sugar rim), Shekerato Affogato (espresso, Mora ice cream, vanilla syrup and mint sprig) and many others.
Drinks at an American Starbucks Reserve cost an average of about $5 to $10.
The menu also includes alternative types of coffee brewing: Chemex, siphon, coffee press, pourover and cold brew Nitro. I wonder what will be available in Moscow? We don't have long to wait.