The Starbucks Palace: The 15,600-square-foot roastery and tasting room houses two coffee bars, a scooping bar, a coffee library, two roasting facilities, and a restaurant.

  • KELLY O
  • The Starbucks Palace: The 15,600-square-foot roastery and tasting room houses two coffee bars, a scooping bar, a coffee library, two roasting facilities, and a restaurant.

There was probably a time when Starbucks did things small. That time was more than 30 years and 21,000 stores ago. The newest Starbucks—the Starbucks Reserve Roastery & Tasting Room on Pike Street (“Just nine blocks away from our original Pike Place Market Store”)—is a 15,600-square-foot palace rumored to have cost more than $20 million to build. It is, according to the company, “a one-of-a-kind coffee shrine in our hometown that captures the past, present, and future of Starbucks.” God is in the details, and the Starbucks palace is filled with painstakingly beautiful things: teak wood tables and stools, copper piping, a two-sided steel fireplace, huge felt cut-out curtains with metal stitching. The shrine often has its own security guard posted out front…

KEEP READING>>

Angela Garbes began her food writing career as a freelancer for The Stranger in 2006, joined the staff in 2014, and is now freelancing once again amid writing books; Like a Mother: A Feminist Journey Through...