Starbucks is in Seattle, its birthplace. What's different from what you drink?

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Some time ago, Starbucks launched a limited drink sold for only five days-Unicorn Frappuccino (Unicorn Star Frappuccino).

As it happens, Mr. Penguin was playing chu (chai) in Seattle at that time, and naturally he couldn't help having a drink. It did look like a young girl's heart burst, but it was also too sweet.

Forget it in another city, but this is Seattle, the birthplace of Starbucks, one of the cities with the highest density of cafes in the United States, with thousands of fun cafes that treat coffee as three meals. I can't finish it for a week-- and I wasted precious stomach capacity for this sugar-water mixture.

It breaks my heart.

But that doesn't mean you shouldn't go to Starbucks. On the contrary, Seattle, as the birthplace of Starbucks, has six stores of different shapes. According to your personal needs, you can get a very different coffee experience from Starbucks in China, with different kinds of pressure and feelings.

If your time is limited and you don't have time to visit one by one, then at least these three should take a look.

1 | Pike Place

At the first Starbucks store.

Take sightseeing photos, and then dry this cup of espresso

Whether they are coffee rookies or veteran enthusiasts, whether they like Starbucks or not, few people can resist the temptation to sign in at the first store.

More than 40 years after its birth, Starbucks has more than 25000 stores worldwide, covering 75 countries, and the number of stores is growing at an average rate of 2 a day. Every day, 300000 baristas in green aprons work behind the bar, consuming 100000 kilograms of coffee beans and 900000 liters of milk, making millions of cups of coffee, pouring them into cups printed with green mermaid logo, and generating more than $50 million in average daily sales for this vast business empire.

It all started with this small storefront in Park Market in Seattle in 1971.

▲ 1912 is not the founding year, but the house number of the store.

Pike Market, formerly a farm goods bazaar with a history of a hundred years, was almost demolished at one time, but it was retained by public vote in 1971. Also in March of that year, there was a small shop called Starbucks that sold coffee beans and ground them-yes, no ready-made coffee drinks. In an era when most people are used to canned coffee powder in supermarkets, it is indeed synonymous with niche boutiques.

It was not until 1984 that Starbucks offered its first latte at its downtown Seattle store, which was also a novelty to Americans at the time.

When visiting Milan, marketing director Howard Schultz (Howard Schultz) was fascinated by espresso and wanted to bring this coffee culture to Americans. He disagreed with the founder of Starbucks, so he opened several small cafes in Seattle in 1985, raised enough money, and then went back to buy Starbucks in 1987. The famous espresso has appeared on Starbucks's drink list until now.

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Walking through the flower, fruit and seafood stalls of Pike Market, ignoring the roadside cafe where the chef pours a pot full of king crabs, clams, prawns and green shellfish, and excluding the aroma of handmade cheese and Russian bread, you can find this humble Starbucks shop on the seaside side of Pike Market.

As you may know, Starbucks stores can be roughly divided into ordinary and Zhenxuan coffee stores, which belongs to the latter, but as the first store with such a memorable meaning, it offers drinks that are not much different from those of other stores. It also uses an Italian semi-automatic coffee machine.

It has maintained its pristine appearance in its early years, with no expansion and no seats. Tourists from all over the world who came to the pilgrimage packed the narrow space so that they could only stand in the line to find a suitable angle for the selfie.

There is nothing more ceremonial than ordering a cup of espresso, standing at the bar and drinking it, saluting Mr. Schultz. Of course, asking for a latte to take out, in response to the first latte offered by Starbucks, is also a full choice.

Although the crowd is crowded, you can at least remember the appearance of the original coffee bean shop on the edge of the shelf. Coffee beans from different producing areas are provided here, as well as unique "Pike Place" packaging.

You can also see the earliest double-tailed mermaid logo here, still with mysterious images of ancient totems. People who know the goods will buy a coffee cup and go back to the collection-this cup can only be bought in the first store.

2 | The Starbucks Reserve Roastery & Tasting Room

Underground factory, intuitive roasting process of coffee and raw beans

On the bar, tasting different kinds of coffee producing areas.

The Parker Market store focuses on nostalgia, but this store is at the other extreme. You can't even see the classic mermaid Logo here, only a simple star and the letter R, suggesting that it is different.

The store, which opened in 2014, is Starbucks' first bakery. The second store will open soon, in Shanghai.)

Not far from the Washington Convention and Exhibition Center, there is a spacious open factory underground, with winding pipes, coffee roasters running tirelessly, and roasted beans falling into huge copper storage tanks.

Some of the beans are sent directly to the circular bar on the ground, where there are several top espresso machines and bean grinders running at the same time, and customers can sit down nearby and watch the production of a cup of coffee. The bar not far away belongs to hand-brewed coffee, and you can enjoy the ritual hand-brewing process up close.

Coffee is served near the entrance. If you encounter anything that suits your taste, you can directly buy coffee beans by weighing them at the counter in front of you.

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Compared with ordinary stores, there are a variety of coffee beans from different places to choose from, and the degree of roasting is also different. Most coffees still drink in a medium-deep style. I drank a cup of Ethiopian Yega Chuefei, which is different from what I usually drink in China. Although it says medium and shallow baking, the acidity is still low and I don't drink much native flavor.

To my surprise, nitrogen coffee has a dense taste, a faint acidity and a sweet aftertaste.

Although the coffee is not amazing enough, you can at least buy the surrounding products with a strong sense of design here, such as the City Cup and products that work with different artists.

3 | Roy Street Coffee & Tea

The only fully automatic new espresso machine in the world

It is also the literary and artistic gathering place of music & movies.

This store, located in the Seattle Capitol Hill area, is like a neutralization of the above two stores.

The decoration has a sense of age, and the wooden door is said to have been a movie prop with an old color. The soft sofa chair makes people want to spend the afternoon reading and reading newspapers. Every month, all kinds of music and movie salons are held here, full of literary and artistic flavor.

However, this is actually Starbucks' innovative experimental store, with a variety of creative seasonal drinks. Now, our goal is this shiny, fully automatic espresso machine, the only one in the world.

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Of course you can conservatively ask the clerk to use semi-automatic machines to make your espresso, but I strongly recommend that you choose fully automatic machines (Sbux Phantom), which is the essence of Roy Street stores.

Just like the name of the machine, there is little need for manual operation. It has four types of coffee beans to choose from, and for each bean, the machine has corresponding processing parameters. Pour directly into the coffee beans, espresso as if by magic, slowly emerging from the small cup in the middle of the tube.

This "laziness" does not detract from the flavor of coffee. Kenya is very concentrated, smooth and round, with a clear flavor, which has subverted my perception of Starbucks coffee.

There are also cold brew sales of large bottles in the exhibition area, and the unique design of the glass bottles alone makes people want to take them away.

On weekdays, the beans here are the same as those in other Zhenxuan shops, but when Mr. Penguin visited, he found that they had prepared a batch of special coffee beans for the coffee exhibition.

If you buy a bag of coffee beans, you can also get any cup of coffee drink they give away.

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Starbucks has been a business legend of a coffee empire for 46 years. It is impressive, but it has also been criticized.

But if you come to Seattle, you will find that Starbucks is actually looking for a different role driven by boutique coffee.

Starbucks naturally does not have the strong personality of independent cafes, but objectively speaking, it also has its own advantages. In addition to coffee, environment, service, trust and other factors may affect the customer experience of a cafe. In these respects, many independent cafes are in their infancy.

The coffee industry in Seattle is very admirable. While there are many independent cafes, Starbucks is also densely distributed, but not like a cold commercial chain, but more like a warm convenience store infiltrating into the community, providing a comfortable environment for daily work and social interaction. Although the positioning is different, but still live in harmony, and there is no "disdain chain".

Instead of competing with the so-called "push", don't push each other up and down, and focus on exploring the possibility of a good coffee shop-this is probably the ideal state.