The World’s Largest Starbucks
Crate & Barrel branded its bona fides as a midwestern brick-and-mortar powerhouse for twenty-seven years at the multi-story showcase at Michigan and Erie. What kinds of products need to billboard their primacy in the twenty-first century? That which is consumed. Starbucks will roll out its latest of many branding concepts in early 2019 at the location, dubbing the four-to-five-story dreadnought, its largest ever, the “Starbucks Reserve Roastery.” Permits suggest that the cost of the 43,000-square-foot space will exceed $10 million. Starbucks corporate promises a “fully sensorial coffee environment.” Starbucks executive chairman Howard Schultz likes the smell of his own brand, telling the Trib in April 2017, “It’s not a coffee store, the essence of it is the theater and romance and something so experiential.” (Ray Pride)
Best of Chicago 2018
