I'm in Shanghai. I'm about to go inside the world's largest Starbucks.
Yes, it's in China, not Dubai.
This is called Starbucks Reserve Roastery, which means it has its own roasting facility inside the store.
It's massive, even meant to resemble the experience of an amusement park.
This is the map inside.
It also serves as an innovation center.
Beer infused with coffee.
In 2017, Starbucks opened its first Starbucks Reserve,
a higher-end experience with Nitro draft lattes and alcoholic drinks.
Now it's planning to open a 1,000 more of them.
But the roastery is on another level.
This is what's known as the tasting room. It's for organized events, tastings, things like that.
The craziest part?
There's a separate standalone Starbucks literally across the street.
One of the first things you see when you walk in here isn't anything related to coffee,
but is actually chocolate.
It's kind of like being at a Godiva store.
The Roastery is hard to miss.
Once the coffee is packed, it goes through what's known as the symphony pipes,
which go up along the ceiling as you can see above me.
And then it goes all the way over to this coffee bar.
At the root of the store is, of course, coffee.
Here you can see where the coffee beans come from. You can see Costa Rica, Peru, Colombia, Tanzania.
And every two to three months that changes depending on where the sourcing team
finds the Starbucks Reserve coffee beans.
Then there's the hand-crafted coffee bar experience.
It's not a quick experience.
It's going to take about five minutes from the start of the boiling of the water.
But that was done deliberately so that the baristas can engage with the customers,
and talk to them a little bit on a personal level about the coffee.
It comes with a card in Chinese.
But if you read Chinese then you can see where the coffee came from, the flavor profile,
a little bit more about what you're about to drink.
In addition to selling food, coffee and merchandise, Starbucks tests out products here too.
This is a beer infused with Starbucks coffee.
It's exclusive to this location in Shanghai and one flagship store in Beijing.
So you can't get this outside of China.
My brain is a bit confused about whether I'm going to a nine a.m. meeting or a six o'clock happy hour.
This mojito is available as a non-alcoholic beverage.
But it's also available with alcohol, where it would have everything it has now, with a little bit of rum as well.
The food is all made by a strategic partner, Princi.
It's a Milan-based cafe and bistro, that has croissants, pastries and even pizza.
Coincidentally I tried out a Princi just a few months earlier in Milan.
So, is their pizza in Shanghai as good?
This pizza?
Not as good as it was in Milan.
I suppose that's to be expected.
Also, it's certainly not cheap. A slice of pizza costs 78 yuan. That's more than $10.
Working here is a title that's considered to be earned.
To get a job here isn't exactly easy.
In fact, you have to start out at another Starbucks store within China and work your way to this one.
There's a, sort of, competition to get a job here,
which will test your knowledge of coffee, your customer service skills
and eventually, if you're good enough, then you can work at this Starbucks Reserve Roastery.