That's that me espresso: What’s inside world's first Starbucks store, roastery?
SEATTLE, USA — “This is where it all began… My dream to build a company that fosters respect and dignity, to create a place where we can all come together over a cup of coffee. Onward with love, Howard Schultz.”
The words of the former Marketing director, who would later on become the owner and Chief Executive Officer, of one of the world’s biggest, if not largest, coffee chains today, Starbucks, still greets visitors as they enter the coffee chain’s 1912 Pike Place store, one of the brand’s first ever stores and the only one from the brand’s original founders that is still open today.
Originally founded in Seattle’s Pike Place Market on March 30, 1971 by former University of San Francisco students Jerry Baldwin, Gordon Bowker and Zev Siegl as a coffee bean wholesaler, Starbucks was inspired by “Starbo,” a mining town in Washington State’s Cascade Range. “Starbucks” also coincidentally sounds like '“Starbuck,” the name of the chief mate in “Moby-Dick,” although “’Moby-Dick’ didn't have anything to do with Starbucks directly,” said Bowker.
Records show that from 1971 to 1976, the first Starbucks store was originally at 2000 Western Avenue. Today, Google Maps images show the address is now part of a harbor front across the present location of the Pike Place Market.
The founders then moved Starbucks to 1912 Pike Place Market, its present location. At the beginning, the store only sold coffee beans from its supplier, Peet’s Coffee & Tea. In 1984, Starbucks bought Peet’s Coffee & Tea.
Apart from still having the original 1971 to 1987 “woodcut” logo of the topless Starbucks siren with fully visible double fish tails in its store signage and merchandise, the Pike Place Market store exclusively carries its namesake signature blend, which comes in the forms of both coffee beans and instant mix.
Just a 15-minute walk from 1912 Pike Place Market is the first Starbucks roastery in the world, which is about to mark its 10th anniversary in December. Like the 1912 Pike Place Market store, the roastery has a logo patterned after the original Starbucks siren.
“We are the first out of six roasteries in the world, three in the country. We are a very, very small part of Starbucks. We do something like 1% of Starbucks, whole bean coffee sales,” the roastery’s tour guide, Caitlyn, told Philstar.com, other media and Philippine Airlines executives during the tour.
Caitlyn proudly shared that the building where the roastery is located is around 100 years old and originally was the home of a luxury car dealership since the street was called Auto Row. The roastery’s present address is 1124 Pike Street.
In a few years since the roastery opened in 2014, the company fulfilled its dream of having an Italian bakery inside Starbucks, in partnership with Seattle pizza restaurant Serious Pie. When the partnership ended, Starbucks opened its own bakery in the roastery, which now serves freshly-baked pastries and pizzas. Besides the bakery, what sets the roastery apart from most Starbucks stores is its bar that serves coffee- and tea-based cocktails like Espresso Martini.
Giving this Starbucks its "Charlie and the Chocolate Factory" vibe are its giant machines, through which customers can actually see their coffee processed from bean to cup. Most of these machines, said Caitlyn, are dedicated to making sure the coffee beans are clean and devoid of pests and debris like coins that might have been dropped in the sacks while the coffee was harvested in the fields.
“Coffee roasting is a very scientific process,” she said of the roastery’s vacuum packing technology, “And so you're removing a very specific amount of moisture when you're roasting, depending on what kind of roast herb you're using.”
The roastery's "crown jewel," said Caitlyn, is its coffee bar, which serves the roastery's two permanent signature coffees: the house coffee Seattle Roastery Microblend only available at the Seattle roastery; and the Costa Rica decaffeinated coffee.
“The decaf is really cool. It's a Costa Rica decaf. It's grown at one of the only farms in the world that's owned by Starbucks,” Caitlyn explained. “So rather than purchasing it from a farm and then, you know, processing it and then Starbucks roasting it. We own every step of the way all the way from like planting the tree, which is really unusual in the coffee industry.” — Video by Deni Rose M. Afinidad-Bernardo; additional video editing by Martin Ramos
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Editor's note: The tour to Seattle was hosted by Philippine Airlines to promote tourism in the area. At no stage does the host organization have a say on the stories generated from the coverage, interviews conducted, publication date and story treatment. Content is produced solely by Philstar.com following editorial guidelines.
