Starbucks has recently been in the news saying that they want to expand the number of Evenings Starbucks. If you don’t know, an Evenings Starbucks offers beer and wine on the menu as well as elevated food items, such as truffle mac and cheese, or chocolate fondue. As I write this, I believe that there are roughly thirty Evenings Starbucks locations across the United States. In 2009, the first Starbucks-operated enterprises to offer beer and wine were Roy Street Coffee and Tea and 15th Avenue Coffee and Tea. Those two stores were part of the “Inspired by Starbucks” series of stores. In 2010, the East Olive Way Starbucks became the first traditional Starbucks to offer beer and wine.
This King 5 News article says that Starbucks hopes to expand their Evenings concepts stores to “several thousands.”
I’ve been to every Seattle Evenings Starbucks, including the new University Village Starbucks. The Terry and Republican Evenings Starbucks is just beautiful. Sometimes people have this mental image that if Starbucks starts serving beer and wine it will turn into a place of swaggering Frappuccino addicts slurring their speech and ordering yet another wine. This is not the case. At least in Seattle, most coffee houses offer beer and wine. It’s a casual place to have conversation over a glass of wine. What do you think of this planned expansion of Evenings stores?
Recently, I dropped by the Kirkland, Washington Evenings Starbucks, and took a few photos. The store manager Stephanie, is amazing. She was a Starbucks store manager in Australia at one time! She can make you a wonderful flat white, if you want. The Kirkland Starbucks is located in the Juanita neighborhood and has been there since September 18, 1993. It converted to an Evenings store about six months ago, and offers Clover-brewed Reserve coffees too:
Kirkland Evenings Starbucks
9721 NE 119th Way
Juanita Village
Kirkland, WA 98034
Enjoy!
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I LOVE those huge windows and the Roast curve board! Ethan and I will put this store on our list for the next time we’re in Washington!
@Rachel – I hope you and Ethan come back soon! Denver is one place I’d love to get back to so maybe I’ll see the two of you soon! And I’m with you – the roast curve chalkboard is one of my favorite things about this store.
I’m super excited about this prospect. Even though there are a couple evening stores here in California, they are hours away from my house. My worry is that here in our market (Central Valley California), we have only built stores that are as small as possible in order to build as many stores as is feasible. I can think of only one store in our market that is even big enough to handle evenings business, and that would require a lot of remodeling. Our stores are 75% drive thru, with minimal seating areas, so we would need to see some new stores built in order to take advantage of this.
But really, I’d settle for a Clover store first, we don’t have one of those either, I have to go on vacation 3 hours away to get to one of those as well.
Glad you had a great visit to our beautiful little store in Juanita! Come back any time!!!
Steph
i think this is a great move for starbucks. as was mentioned at the shareholders meeting, this is the third wave of coffee. celebrating rare, micro lots, pairing them with artisan foods, craft beers and wines. as a foodie, craft beer fanatic and a coffee nerd, i couldn’t be happier.
i think that once more stores start rolling out, people will see it’s not a “bar” and we aren’t serving tall boys of pbr and shots of soco, but it’s a safe, comfortable place for people like me who want to have a glass of wine, but do not want to go to a bar. plus the fact that they have bacon sweetens the deal 😉
Absolutely beautiful store! I saw the article on SB expanding and offering more Evenings store and I would love to see one in my neck of the woods. There are two SB stores opening up around here soon, but I think they are just regular stores. I assume these stores also offer the regular menu of coffees, etc. Will all these stores also each have a clover or did this just occur because before they converted to an Evenings store they had a clover?
Hi Melody!
I’m a store manager in the Beverly Hills district in Los Angeles, and I have some news related to this blog post that you may be interested in!
One of our busiest stores with the opportunity to expand the square footage had closed for remodel last month. They’re targeted to reopen in May as a brand new flagship and concept store – Starbucks + Evenings + Clover + Teavana ! The previous store was a bit small, so they knocked down some walls of businesses that share the building and have turned it into a giant store. With Teavana under the same roof, were all so excited to see how this is going to look.
The most frequent question has been, is it one line to order drinks from both units and is it one store manager running both units? The answer I’ve gotten is that they will be separate lines with a shared cafe run by two store managers. I’m working with the Starbucks SM for a hiring fair, but haven’t met the Teavana SM yet. I have heard she was previously a Starbucks SM though!
I know this is quite the home from Seattle, but if you are in Los Angeles – I’d recommend checking out this newly remodeled store!
George, wow that is great news!!!!!! I hope to see one of these in Seattle!!!!
I depend on this blog to keep me informed on all things Starbucks. This is probably a stupid question, but what is a “flat white”?
IzzyJ, a flat white is one of two drinks that are unique to the Australian (along with New Zealand and the UK I believe) market. I was part of the opening team in the New Zealand market years ago and I remember when we opened every other customer came in asking for a “flat white.” We were all scratching our heads asking what a flat white was as it was something that Starbucks didn’t recognize. We actually went out as a team one afternoon and ordered as many flat whites from other cafés as research. This was back in 99. Months later it was up on our boards.
A flat white is essentially a latte with no foam and an extra shot of espresso.
@ Chris W. – I’m in the Central Valley too. I’m in Manteca and I was told the other night by one of the baristas at the Union/Yosemite Starbucks that they were going to become one of the Evening ones around summertime.
I can’t even picture it though. There’s nowhere for them to add on a bar area and that location has (I think) the least amount of drink ware and bagged coffee available (because of nowhere to display it) compared to the other Starbucks in town. Oh and I was also told they are going to start serving Italian Soda’s! I may be more excited about that than the beer & wine since I’m not a huge drinker of either.