星巴克借梦幻体验店挺进高端市场

SeaTTLE — It’s hard to believe that this coffee-crazed city would get excited about yet another coffee shop, particularly another Starbucks.

西雅图——你可能很难相信，这个以咖啡闻名的城市会因为一家新咖啡馆而激动不已，何况只是另一家星巴克(Starbucks)咖啡馆。

For over a year, the Seattle coffeecenti has been buzzing with speculation about the opening of the Starbucks Reserve Roastery and Tasting Room, the flagship of a planned chain of 100 plush stores selling high-end coffees from around the world.

在一年多的时间里，一直有传闻称，这个诞生于西雅图的咖啡品牌将开设一家名为“星巴克精品烘烤品尝室”(Starbucks Reserve Roastery and Tasting Room)的旗舰店。星巴克计划开设100家这样的精品咖啡连锁店，销售来自世界各地的高端咖啡。

With this new venture, Starbucks has signaled that it intends to lure aficionados of high-end coffee, as it eyes the growing market for rare coffees, those beans grown in small quantities that sell for as much as $45 for less than a pound.

这个新项目表明，星巴克打算吸引高端咖啡爱好者，该公司正着眼于稀有品种咖啡日益庞大的市场。稀有咖啡豆种植规模小，不到一磅的售价就可能高达45美元（约合280元人民币）。

But it already faces considerable competition from boutique chains like Stumptown Coffee Roasters, Dillanos Coffee Roasters and Blue Bottle Coffee that have already developed thriving businesses in what are known as single-origin coffees and microlots. Such coffees come from a single farm or small collective, typically hard to reach and fickle, so that production is limited and often available only at specific times of the year. Their customers tend to shun the sort of big-business ubiquity that a mass-coffee purveyor like Starbucks embodies.

不过，星巴克面临着斯邓姆顿咖啡馆(Stumptown Coffee Roasters)、迪拉诺斯咖啡烘烤公司(Dillanos Coffee Roasters)和蓝瓶咖啡(Blue Bottle Coffee)等精品咖啡连锁店的激烈竞争，它们凭借所谓的单一产地和微批次(microlot)的模式而风生水起。这些品牌的咖啡只来自单一的农场或小型合作社，一般很难买到，因此产量有限，通常只能在一年中的特定时间才有。而这些咖啡的消费人群往往是那些厌倦了以星巴克为代表的无处不在的大众品牌的消费者。

In fact, Laila Ghambari, director of coffee at Cherry Street Coffee House, which has 10 shops in the Seattle area, calls Starbucks the “McDonald’s of coffee.”

事实上，樱桃街咖啡馆(Cherry Street Coffee House)的咖啡负责人莱拉·甘巴里(Laila Ghambari)把星巴克称作“咖啡中的麦当劳”。樱桃街咖啡馆在西雅图地区有10家门店。

So to distinguish Reserve from its mass-market cousin, Starbucks is banishing, to a great extent, its green mermaid logo at the new shops and in the product line. The Reserve stores and line of coffees instead carry a star logo, along with a red “R.”

为了与星巴克的大众市场品牌区别开来，星巴克精品烘烤品牌的新店和产品线，很大程度上摒弃了绿色美人鱼的商标，而是使用了一个星形标志，加上一个红色字母“R”。

The reach into a higher-end market is another sign that coffee consumption in the United States is growing only modestly, according to trade data on imports collected by Panjiva. The popularity of single-serve coffee makers like Keurig and Nespresso have added pressure.

星巴克进军高端市场的努力还显示出，美国的咖啡消费增长缓慢，磐聚网(Panjiva)收集的进口贸易数据也印证了这一点。Keurig和Nespresso等胶囊咖啡机的超高人气，也加剧了市场的竞争压力。

“If you look at coffee imports over all for the last several years, it looks like a pretty mature market,” said Josh Green, chief executive of Panjiva. “There’s been a roller coaster in terms of price, but in terms of volumes, we’re talking about very modest growth — and that kind of market is usually where you see companies trying to go upmarket in terms of price and exclusivity.”

“从过去几年咖啡进口的整体状况来看，市场似乎已经相当成熟，”磐聚网CEO乔希·格林(Josh Green)说。“价格上忽高忽低，但进口规模一直增长有限——在这类市场，通常会有许多企业想要走向高端，在价格和产品的独特性上提高档次。”

The new Starbucks Roastery is rumored to have cost more than $20 million. Part retail store, part manufacturing facility and part theater, the store intentionally evokes the chocolate room where Augustus Gloop met his fate in Willy Wonka’s candy factory. See-through tubes snake up out of the floor and under the ceiling, ferrying green coffee beans to copper-clad roasters and roasted beans to the coffee bars scattered like islands around the 15,000-square-foot space.

据称，新的星巴克烘烤品尝室成本超过2000万美元。它集零售店、生产加工和剧场与一身，而且还故意营造出了奥古斯塔斯·格鲁普(Augustus Gloop)进入威利·旺卡(Willy Wonka)的巧克力工厂时的那种梦想成真的感觉。透明的管子在地板和天花板上蜿蜒，把绿色的咖啡豆送进镀了铜的烘烤机，接着将烘烤好的咖啡豆，送往向岛屿一样散落在1.5万平方英尺（约合1400平米）面积里的吧台。

“This is a magical place where coffee comes to life,” said Liz Muller, director of concept design for Starbucks.

“这是一个神奇的地方，它让咖啡拥有了生命，”星巴克的概念设计总监利兹·穆勒 (Liz Muller)。

The noise the beans make as they rattle through the tubes — “like rain,” Ms. Muller says — is punctuated by the click-clack of an old-fashioned railway station split-flap display, except the schedule tracked here is of varieties of coffees being roasted. They are small lots from remote highlands in Africa, Latin America and Asia.

咖啡豆在管子里哗哗作响的声音——“就像下雨，”穆勒说——中间夹杂着老式火车站里的信息屏，翻着字母牌显示信息的那种咔咔声，只不过这里的时刻表显示的是各种咖啡的烘烤时间。这些咖啡都来自非洲、拉丁美洲和亚洲遥远高地上的小块田地。

“We’re going to take the customer on a journey, immersing them in an interactive environment where they’ll be introduced to handcrafted, small-batch coffees within feet of where they’re being roasted,” said Howard Schultz, chief executive of Starbucks.

“我们要把消费者带上一段旅程，让他们沉浸在互动的环境里，让他们近距离地了解小批量手工生产的咖啡，”星巴克CEO霍华德·舒尔茨(Howard Schultz)说。

Virginia Morris, vice president for consumer insights and strategy at Daymon Worldwide, a private-brand development company, noted that consumers were seeking singular experiences that would include individualistic brews. But specialty brewers who have attracted loyalists doubt that a giant in the mass-market will be viewed favorably.

私营品牌拓展公司达曼国际咨询(Daymon Worldwide)的消费者洞见和战略副总裁弗吉尼亚·莫里斯(Virginia Morris)指出，消费者正在寻求独一无二的体验，包括个性化的咖啡制作工艺。但吸引了一批忠实拥趸的专享咖啡店十分怀疑，这样一个面向大众市场的巨人，能否受到青睐。

“I think you can start out small and grow large, but once you’re large, it’s really hard to get the consumer’s perception that you are authentic,” said David J. Morris, half-owner of Dillanos.

“我觉得品牌可以起步时很小，后来再逐步扩大，但一旦规模变大，真的很难让消费者认为你很正宗，”迪拉诺斯的半个老板戴维·J·莫里斯(David J. Morris)说。

The company says the price per cup of a Reserve line will be $4 to $7, depending on the exclusivity of the beans, of course.

星巴克透露，每杯精品系列咖啡的价格将在4至7美元，当然具体视咖啡豆的独特性而定。

Single-origin coffees typically are named for the places they are grown, not just the country. Stumptown’s website includes a link to Google maps, so a customer can see, say, where its Colombia San Isidro is grown.

单一产地咖啡通常以它们的种植地，而不仅仅是国家命名。斯邓姆顿的网站上有可以跳转到谷歌(Google)地图的链接。这样，消费者就能看到这家店里诸如Colombia San Isidro这样的品类生长在哪里。

Microlots come from a specific parcel of land, like the section of the Finca El Manzano coffee farm in El Salvador that grows Dillanos’s El Manzano Porton Lot, which produced just 60 bags of coffee last year and was used by Ms. Ghambari when she won the United States Barista Championship this year.

微批次咖啡来自具体的某块地，比如萨尔瓦多Finca El Manzano咖啡园中，为迪拉诺斯种植El Manzano Porton Lot的那块地。去年，那块地仅出产了60袋咖啡。甘巴里今年在美国咖啡师锦标赛(United States Barista Championship)中夺冠时，用的就是那里出产的咖啡。

“Each one has a signature nature, and each year it may be different, depending on when the rain comes and how much shade it gets,” said David Schomer, the proprietor of Espresso Vivace, which has three locations in Seattle, including a sidewalk stand in the Capitol Hill neighborhood, not far from the Reserve Roastery. “Each one will be roasted differently by the roaster, who may develop more or less caramelization or more or less bitterness.”

“每块地都有标志性的特质，每年的情况都有所不同，取决于雨季到来的时间，以及植株能得到多少阴凉，”Espresso Vivace的老板戴维·绍默(David Schomer)说。该品牌在西雅图有三家店，其中一家位于国会山地区的一条人行道旁，距离星巴克的精品烘烤店不远。“烘烤师会以不同方式对每一个品类进行烘烤，焦糖化反应有轻有重，苦味也有轻有重。”

Until recently, Dillanos Coffee Roasters largely served commercial customers, roasting private-label coffees and helping them develop house blends. “They need lots of coffee, not small lots of great coffee, and consistency is very important there,” said Chris Heyer, who owns the business together with his half brother, Mr. Morris.

直到不久前，迪拉诺斯咖啡烘烤公司还主要服务于商业客户，烘烤专属咖啡并帮助客户研发自有的调配咖啡产品。“它们需要大量的咖啡，而不是少量优质咖啡，而且口味的一致性非常重要，”克里斯·海尔(Chris Heyer)说。他和同母异父的兄弟莫里斯共同拥有该公司。

About a decade ago, they started the One Harvest Project, a line of fair-trade, sustainable coffees, providing education, health and other benefits to growers with whom the company wished to develop long-term relationships.

大约十年前，他们启动了“一次收获项目”(One Harvest Project)。这是一个推行公平贸易、可持续的咖啡业务线，该公司向希望与其达成长期合作关系的咖啡种植户提供教育、健康和其他方面的福利。

That led to an even more exclusive line of coffees, DCR, which Phil Beattie, the Dillanos coffee director, called a natural progression that included the El Manzano microlot.

这又催生了更为独特的咖啡品牌DCR。迪拉诺斯公司的咖啡总监称，这是包括El Manzano微批次在内的自然发展。

The company may purchase less than 300 pounds of such coffees. In comparison, it roasts 2,000 pounds of its signature Dillons Blend coffee each day.

该公司可能会购买不到300磅这种咖啡。相比之下，它每天会烘烤2000磅自有的主打品类“迪隆混合”(Dillons Blend)。

So what happens when a company the size of Starbucks begins shopping for those precious beans, some of which may only be available for less than a month a year? Peet’s Coffee is selling a half-pound bag of scarce Jamaica Blue Mountain coffee, one batch roasted on Wednesday and the second scheduled for roasting next week, for $45.

因此，如果一家像星巴克那么大规模的公司开始采购罕有品种的咖啡豆，会发生什么？那些咖啡豆中，有一些每年出产的时间可能都不到一个月。皮特咖啡(Peet’s Coffee)正在以45美元的价格，出售半磅装的牙买加蓝山咖啡(Jamaica Blue Mountain)，第一批是上周三烘烤的，第二批定于这周烘烤。

Specialty coffee companies say relationships established over many years with growers will protect them from competition from bigger players. “We have worked with our growers for a long time and we expect to continue to work with them,” said Eric Hoest, director of operations at Stumptown, which is based in Portland.

精品咖啡公司称，多年来与咖啡种植户建立起来的关系，能保护它们免受更大品牌的竞争。“我们已经和种植户合作了很长时间，我们希望继续与他们合作，”总部位于波特兰的斯邓姆顿公司的运营总监埃里克·赫斯特(Eric Hoest)说。

To expand in this area, Starbucks bought Hacienda Alsacia in Costa Rica, an estate that will produce specialty coffee just for the company.

为了在该领域扩张，星巴克买下了哥斯达黎加的Hacienda Alsacia咖啡园。该咖啡园将仅为该公司供应精品咖啡。

Starbucks roasters will be available only at five or six new sites, but some of the Reserve coffee brands will be for sale in over 1,000 Starbucks stores.

星巴克的烘烤设备仅会在五六家新店配置，但部分精品咖啡品牌将在1000多家星巴克咖啡店出售。

Mr. Schultz said his vision for the Reserve Roastery store stretched back a decade or more, and he collected a scrapbook with ideas for finishes and furnishings. But it wasn’t until a used car dealership nine blocks up Pine Street from the first Starbucks store became available that he began executing his plans.

舒尔茨称自己对精品烘烤店的设想可以追溯到十年甚至更久之前，而且他还用一个剪贴簿，收集了有关涂漆和室内装饰的想法。但直到可以买下松树街上距离第一家星巴克咖啡店九个街区远的一家二手车店，他才开始执行自己的计划。

He said the Reserve stores would be run as a business and must make a profit to survive. “At the end of the day,” he added, “this all has to be proven in a cup — and it will be.”

他说，精品烘烤店会作为一家企业来运营，并且要想存活下来，就必须盈利。“说到底，”他接着说，“所有这些都需要在咖啡杯里得到证明——也会得到证明。”