星巴克借夢幻體驗店挺進高端市場

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

西雅圖——你可能很難相信，這個以咖啡聞名的城市會因爲一家新咖啡館而激動不已，何況只是另一家星巴克(Starbucks)咖啡館。

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.

在一年多的時間裏，一直有傳聞稱，這個誕生於西雅圖的咖啡品牌將開設一家名爲“星巴克精品烘烤品嚐室”(Starbucks Reserve Roastery and Tasting Room)的旗艦店。星巴克計劃開設100家這樣的精品咖啡連鎖店，銷售來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.

這個新項目表明，星巴克打算吸引高端咖啡愛好者，該公司正着眼於稀有品種咖啡日益龐大的市場。稀有咖啡豆種植規模小，不到一磅的售價就可能高達45美元（約合280元人民幣）。

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.

不過，星巴克面臨着斯鄧姆頓咖啡館(Stumptown Coffee Roasters)、迪拉諾斯咖啡烘烤公司(Dillanos Coffee Roasters)和藍瓶咖啡(Blue Bottle Coffee)等精品咖啡連鎖店的激烈競爭，它們憑藉所謂的單一產地和微批次(microlot)的模式而風生水起。這些品牌的咖啡只來自單一的農場或小型合作社，一般很難買到，因此產量有限，通常只能在一年中的特定時間纔有。而這些咖啡的消費人羣往往是那些厭倦了以星巴克爲代表的無處不在的大衆品牌的消費者。

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.”

事實上，櫻桃街咖啡館(Cherry Street Coffee House)的咖啡負責人萊拉·甘巴里(Laila Ghambari)把星巴克稱作“咖啡中的麥當勞”。櫻桃街咖啡館在西雅圖地區有10家門店。

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.”

爲了與星巴克的大衆市場品牌區別開來，星巴克精品烘烤品牌的新店和產品線，很大程度上摒棄了綠色美人魚的商標，而是使用了一個星形標誌，加上一個紅色字母“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.

星巴克進軍高端市場的努力還顯示出，美國的咖啡消費增長緩慢，磐聚網(Panjiva)收集的進口貿易數據也印證了這一點。Keurig和Nespresso等膠囊咖啡機的超高人氣，也加劇了市場的競爭壓力。

“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.”

“從過去幾年咖啡進口的整體狀況來看，市場似乎已經相當成熟，”磐聚網CEO喬希·格林(Josh Green)說。“價格上忽高忽低，但進口規模一直增長有限——在這類市場，通常會有許多企業想要走向高端，在價格和產品的獨特性上提高檔次。”

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.

據稱，新的星巴克烘烤品嚐室成本超過2000萬美元。它集零售店、生產加工和劇場與一身，而且還故意營造出了奧古斯塔斯·格魯普(Augustus Gloop)進入威利·旺卡(Willy Wonka)的巧克力工廠時的那種夢想成真的感覺。透明的管子在地板和天花板上蜿蜒，把綠色的咖啡豆送進鍍了銅的烘烤機，接着將烘烤好的咖啡豆，送往向島嶼一樣散落在1.5萬平方英尺（約合1400平米）面積裏的吧檯。

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

“這是一個神奇的地方，它讓咖啡擁有了生命，”星巴克的概念設計總監利茲·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.

咖啡豆在管子裏嘩嘩作響的聲音——“就像下雨，”穆勒說——中間夾雜着老式火車站裏的信息屏，翻着字母牌顯示信息的那種咔咔聲，只不過這裏的時刻表顯示的是各種咖啡的烘烤時間。這些咖啡都來自非洲、拉丁美洲和亞洲遙遠高地上的小塊田地。

“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.

“我們要把消費者帶上一段旅程，讓他們沉浸在互動的環境裏，讓他們近距離地瞭解小批量手工生產的咖啡，”星巴克CEO霍華德·舒爾茨(Howard Schultz)說。

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.

私營品牌拓展公司達曼國際諮詢(Daymon Worldwide)的消費者洞見和戰略副總裁弗吉尼亞·莫里斯(Virginia Morris)指出，消費者正在尋求獨一無二的體驗，包括個性化的咖啡製作工藝。但吸引了一批忠實擁躉的專享咖啡店十分懷疑，這樣一個面向大衆市場的巨人，能否受到青睞。

“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.

“我覺得品牌可以起步時很小，後來再逐步擴大，但一旦規模變大，真的很難讓消費者認爲你很正宗，”迪拉諾斯的半個老闆戴維·J·莫里斯(David J. Morris)說。

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價格將在4至7美元，當然具體視咖啡豆的獨特性而定。

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.

單一產地咖啡通常以它們的種植地，而不僅僅是國家命名。斯鄧姆頓的網站上有可以跳轉到谷歌(Google)地圖的鏈接。這樣，消費者就能看到這家店裏諸如Colombia San Isidro這樣的品類生長在哪裏。

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.

微批次咖啡來自具體的某塊地，比如薩爾瓦多Finca El Manzano咖啡園中，爲迪拉諾斯種植El Manzano Porton Lot的那塊地。去年，那塊地僅出產了60袋咖啡。甘巴里今年在美國咖啡師錦標賽(United States Barista Championship)中奪冠時，用的就是那裏出產的咖啡。

“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.”

“每塊地都有標誌性的特質，每年的情況都有所不同，取決於雨季到來的時間，以及植株能得到多少陰涼，”Espresso Vivace的老闆戴維·紹默(David Schomer)說。該品牌在西雅圖有三家店，其中一家位於國會山地區的一條人行道旁，距離星巴克的精品烘烤店不遠。“烘烤師會以不同方式對每一個品類進行烘烤，焦糖化反應有輕有重，苦味也有輕有重。”

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，迪拉諾斯咖啡烘烤公司還主要服務於商業客戶，烘烤專屬咖啡並幫助客戶研發自有的調配咖啡產品。“它們需要大量的咖啡，而不是少量優質咖啡，而且口味的一致性非常重要，”克里斯·海爾(Chris Heyer)說。他和同母異父的兄弟莫里斯共同擁有該公司。

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.

大約十年前，他們啓動了“一次收穫項目”(One Harvest Project)。這是一個推行公平貿易、可持續的咖啡業務線，該公司向希望與其達成長期合作關係的咖啡種植戶提供教育、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.

這又催生了更爲獨特的咖啡品牌DCR。迪拉諾斯公司的咖啡總監稱，這是包括El Manzano微批次在內的自然發展。

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.

該公司可能會購買不到300磅這種咖啡。相比之下，它每天會烘烤2000磅自有的主打品類“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麼大規模的公司開始採購罕有品種的咖啡豆，會發生什麼？那些咖啡豆中，有一些每年出產的時間可能都不到一個月。皮特咖啡(Peet’s Coffee)正在以45美元的價格，出售半磅裝的牙買加藍山咖啡(Jamaica Blue Mountain)，第一批是上週三烘烤的，第二批定於這周烘烤。

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.

精品咖啡公司稱，多年來與咖啡種植戶建立起來的關係，能保護它們免受更大品牌的競爭。“我們已經和種植戶合作了很長時間，我們希望繼續與他們合作，”總部位於波特蘭的斯鄧姆頓公司的運營總監埃裏克·赫斯特(Eric Hoest)說。

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

爲了在該領域擴張，星巴克買下了哥斯達黎加的Hacienda Alsacia咖啡園。該咖啡園將僅爲該公司供應精品咖啡。

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.

星巴克的烘烤設備僅會在五六家新店配置，但部分精品咖啡品牌將在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.

舒爾茨稱自己對精品烘烤店的設想可以追溯到十年甚至更久之前，而且他還用一個剪貼簿，收集了有關塗漆和室內裝飾的想法。但直到可以買下松樹街上距離第一家星巴克咖啡店九個街區遠的一家二手車店，他纔開始執行自己的計劃。

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.”

他說，精品烘烤店會作爲一家企業來運營，並且要想存活下來，就必須盈利。“說到底，”他接着說，“所有這些都需要在咖啡杯裏得到證明——也會得到證明。”