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(MILAN) – Starbucks is opening its first store in Italy, betting that upscale breweries and novelties, such as a heated coffee bar topped with marble, will appeal to guests from a country that loves its daily espresso rituals.
Decades ago, Milan's cafes inspired the chain's vision. Now, Starbucks hopes customers will visit its new store, Reserve Roastery, to watch roasts, sip a coffee, or sip a cocktail at a mezzanine-level bar at a former post office near the Duomo. Cathedral.
Starbucks design manager Liz Muller told the Associated Press earlier this week that the company "was not coming to Italy to teach people coffee. It is there that coffee is born. "
Instead, said Muller, Starbucks "wanted to come and bring a different premium experience than what Italians are used to."
She described this formula as including "many different brewing techniques and a space in which we want you to stay longer and relax and enjoy."
In Italy, an espresso in a café-bar is usually a quick ritual in the morning or after lunch, performed standing up. In many neighborhoods, cafes are practically every street corner and Italians are in the front row with their trusted barista.
Italy is the 78th largest market in Starbucks, and the opening in Milan comes 20 years after the opening of the first Starbucks store in Europe, in London. The company has described the Milan store as "the jewel of Starbucks global presence in the retail sector".
Milan is the first place where Starbucks opened a store in its Roastery format on untested territory. He opened a Roastery in Seattle, the US city that houses its headquarters in 2014, and a second in Shanghai last year.
Italians are accustomed to marble countertops for cafes, but Starbucks boasts of having fitted out its countertops in Milan's heating shop so they do not feel cold on cold days. The centerpiece of the Milan store is a 6.5m high bronze barrel, which is part of the roasting process.
The company also hopes that the store's cocktail bar will be an attraction: many of those who work in Milan, capital of fashion and finance in Italy, cherish the tradition of meeting friends or colleagues for an aperitif, often in coffees.
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