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Starbucks aims at wealthy customers pushing high-priced coffee and is plotting to study such bars

Published: 2026-02-20 Author: World Gafei

Last Updated: 2026/02/20, Starbucks (Special Reading) decided to invest fully in building a premium coffee brand, providing a more refined tasting experience for wealthy customers, and making up for the slowdown in traditional Starbucks performance. Starbucks plans to open 20 to 30 large Starbucks Reserve Roasters and Tasting Rooms, where on-site roasting produces rare and unique coffee

Starbucks (feature Reading) decided to devote all its efforts to building a high-end coffee brand to provide a more sophisticated tasting experience for wealthy customers to make up for the slow performance of traditional Starbucks.

Starbucks plans to open 20-30 large Starbucks Collection Coffee Roasters and connoisseurs (StarbucksReserveRoasteryandTastingRoom), which roast rare and unique coffee beans on the spot and offer a variety of ways to make coffee. Starbucks expects to set up up to 1000 smaller coffee shops under the Starbucks Collection brand.

HowardSchultz announced in early December that he would step down as CEO in April and hand over the baton to the current chief operating officer, Johnson. Shaw's decision to hand over the baton is surprising, but he has a bigger blueprint in mind and is looking forward to introducing a premium coffee shop that costs $12 for a cup of coffee to the consumer market.

"We have seen many so-called independent cafes that sell coffee at higher prices than we do, creating an interesting trend," Shauz said in an interview. "

Some experts point out that Starbucks is a good strategy for targeting wealthy customers and launching sub-brands of high-end cafes, as consumers are increasingly interested in quality coffee. In addition, the shrinking spending power of the middle class has also affected the demand for traditional Starbucks coffee.

In addition to coffee, the new store also offers refined cocktails (craftcocktail), which adopt the style of a new generation of high-end mixed drinks and fashionable bars to create an atmosphere of relaxed conversation. Starbucks executives have secretly studied such bars, Mr. Shauz said.

Starbucks has failed to meet performance standards in the US, its largest market, for four consecutive quarters, mainly due to an uncertain economic outlook. But Starbucks promised to recreate the 5% growth in same-store sales.