Our Starbucks journey around the globe continues: Next stop, Amersterdam. This Starbucks is in the Sloterdijk train station in Amsterdam, and is the most recent to be opened in the Netherlands. It was opened July 2, 2010.
Here’s an odd piece of trivia: In the Netherlands, every single Starbucks is located in a train station or at the airport. Others might not recall this, but when MyStarbucksIdea was new, it was common to have new participants come to the site crying out for Starbucks to expand in the Netherlands. Here’s an example of what I mean: Starbucks in The Netherlands. The small number of stores in the country simply didn’t satisfy the Dutch appetite for Starbucks. In 2002, Starbucks opened a very small roasting plant in Holland, and my understanding is that that site has (or had) a very small store but not totally accessible to the general public. The demand for Starbucks in the Netherlands was so great that MyStarbucksIdea announced the opening of an August 2009 store here:
New Starbucks Location – Utrecht Centraal Station, Netherlands
For my readers who speak a little Dutch, there is a Starbucks Netherlands facebook page here. There is even a recent wall posting about House Blend coffee, and the Starbucks Netherlands page suggests that you try this coffee with a delicious piece of appletart! ((“Probeer de koffie eens met een lekker stuk appeltaart.”) (Or at least I’m totally guessing that’s what it says. I didn’t really bother to translate it. It just looks like it says that. “Probieren” is the german word for “try” and “met” is probably “with”, and in German that’s “mit”. In German “lecker” means “delicious” and the German word for piece is “Stück”)).
My understanding is that there are currently 8 Starbucks in the Netherlands. I owe a big thank you to Sebastian who recently took a summer trip to Holland, and emailed me these photos with express permission to use them in the blog. From what I hear, the Starbucks in the Netherlands offer a large variety of food offerings including a BLT, tuna sandwich, a Turkish Falafel sandwich, and a variety of yogurts, pastries, and usually apple pie too. Sebastian reports that he met friendly and nice baristas and great experiences in the Netherlands!
This featured Starbucks in Sloterdijk represents continued expansion of the reclaimed wood/repurposed wood, “Shared Planet” style of store, and I hear that all of these stores have signage on the wall talking about Shared Planet as well as Fair Trade.
For my readers who enjoy a trip around the world with this blog, you can click on this link here for more blog articles about Starbucks’ international markets:
Starbucks International Markets
A few days ago we were visiting Sacramento on this blog, and now we are in Amsterdam! If you’ve never seen this blog post, I recommend you visit my entry on the first Starbucks which is located at 1912 Pike Place in Seattle. One of the odd things that occurs to me when looking at these photos is that it feels like one could travel half way around the world and finally arrive at a place where suddenly it feels like he or she is right at home in Seattle. If I walked into this store today, I’d have this disoriented feeling of being home … in Seattle, not Amsterdam.
Enjoy!
22 Comments
Leave a Reply
You must be logged in to post a comment.
Socialize
oh!!! I have an old time love from Utrecht!!! I will look for him on their FB page, altho doubtful.
Very interesting info here…..I know the Dutch were screaming out for Sbux.
Excellent!
At first, my eyes were robbed by the outside aestheometry design.
My eyes caught the photo of the wall next. It is the same as that big photograph which there is in 15th Ave. (Home Store of Melody).
To outlets under the seat, I feel consideration for the customer of Starbucks.
I think, the wait of long time will not be boring in this store. It’s a very good store.
@Sebastian @Melody
Thank you!
Lovely looking store, for a train station.
I just wish it were real, or that it would become real in the future, so I could visit.
Very interesting. When I lived in Germany and traveled throughout the region, favorite stops were the local coffee houses. I would hope that with Starbucks attention is paid to maintaining the look and feel of native coffee houses.
Starbucks visitor hero @Winter
Do you have a plan to visit Japan?
I visited Japan in ’05: http://starbuckseverywhere.net/Japan.htm
I only got 53 stores though.
I hope to return next year and spend at least two months trying to visit all the stores, now more than 800 I think.
@Winter @Nob
Japan’s Starbucks market boomed so much over the last years…that’s incredible! You can be lucky, Nob…even w/o outlets…:D
Starbucks Amsterdam, so cool!
Did you study German at all? I want to travel to Europe and am wondering if I should improve my French or pick up a little German..hmmm…
Thank you so much for bringing us Starbucks experiences from around the globe!! 🙂
Lynda, you’ll get along fine with English, but no matter where you are, the locals will appreciate it if you know a little of their language and make an effort to use it.
Pick up some German! Making the effort is always appreciated when travelling abroad!
@Lynda – I have studied German. I took it in high school, and then again in undergrad (just a couple of quarters of it), and actually I take a non-credit informal class again now – I’ve been enrolled in it for about a year. It’s great fun: A small little group, and I look forward to my German class every week. If you want to see a little more German, there is a blog post I did here entirely written in German (with English translation too) –
(I am NOT fluent in German).
http://www.starbucksmelody.com/2010/04/22/unsere-reise-um-der-welt-mit-starbucks-fahrt-weiter-nachste-haltepunkt-deutschland
I assume the locals do appreciate it if you at least try to speak their language, but I travel so little, I haven’t a clue. Lynda, if you’re traveling abroad, I think it’s a great idea to brush up your French. Though honestly, French looks a zillion times harder than German.
I wouldn’t mind learning a little Dutch. It just doesn’t look very difficult at all.
@Lynda
If you wanna make a trip thru Europe, the best deal would be to learn some German and French.
Why?
You can use German in at least 3 countries (Germany, Austria, Switzerland) and you find Starbucks in all thre…HaHa! And all those countries are very nice to travel to.
And why French?
France is also a must-do for a Europe trip…they have beautiful cities like Paris or Marseille AND many French people do not speak English. Sometimes they don’t want to, even if they can…you know, in Germany we sometimes say, they are just too vain to speak another language than French. 😀
But some French people can speak some German too…but mostly around the border. And u can also use it in Luxembourg and Belgium.
It is no pain in the ass to learn some Dutch too…it is very similar to German. When I, as a German, made my trips to the Netherlands, I could read almost every sign on the streets and even understand people talking without any knowledge of this language. But it is so similar to German. It’s kinda like a dialect.
Wow, thanks for the feedback everyone, this is awesome!
I took late french immersion in Grades 7 and 8, but haven’t studied it formally in a long time. I plan on doing that in my undergrad to be able to take advantage of an international exchange for a semester.
Some of my classmates are studying German though, and I really feel like it would provide a good reference point for me.
I also have a basic grasp of Spanish at work, and have been able to use it when travelling through Spain and Costa Rica – I love being able to speak in a country’s native tongue, as I feel it enriches the travelling experience. I often get shy about practicing new languages though – I need to get over the fear of it!
This store is beautiful as well, all the natural light makes it so welcoming. The pictures of the coffee cherry is fun too, it seems like it would be a great way to start a coffee conversation.
Guest–“What fruit is in the picture on the wall?”
Partner–“Oh, that’s actually the coffee cherry, the bean is inside.”
Guest–“Interesting, I never knew that…”
And know the door is opened to continue the coffee education!
I wonder if the stores are always that empty of customers and so clean?
@Winter
Great! It’s a magnificent plan. Yes, Japan has almost 900 stores. I visited 20 stores in Japan so, you did visits more than me. LOL
As for the season of the trip to Japan, autumn or winter is good. The Japanese summer season is not good for an American. I may help with something of the visit. 😀
@Sebastian
Oh, really? I do not have big interest about Japanese Starbucks. “The lighthouse does not shine on its base”. LOL
@Melody
I wait for your trip to Japan. 😀
Such a pretty store. It seems like store dev’p have gone with the failsafe commuter strategy with stores in Holland, huh? Random question – does anyone know if whole bean for EMEA is roasted in Amsterdam? What actually gets roasted there?
On the language note, I find German so hard! Somewhere deep in my brain, the French parts mix with the English parts when I try out German and it never ever works out very well! 😕
@Jordan – I think the Starbucks joint venture partner likely chose the direction of having all the stores in train stations or the airport. As to which coffees are roasted at the Amsterdam roasting plant … I would guess, a number of the coffees going to Europe and England.Probably some core coffees like House Blend and Espresso Roast (they have a different Esp. Roast – their’s is Fair Trade). Also Organic Yirgacheffe is a core coffee in Europe. Btw, this is not the same coffee as the U.S. seasonal offering of Sun Dried Yirgacheffe. Org. Yirg, possibly Sanani, and likely a number of micro-lot coffees (Fair Trade Rwanda, sold only in the UK) are probably all roasted in Amsterdam.
I completely agree that this store looks like the avarage North American store. Not much that looks different about it.
@Jordan, Melody is right about which coffees are roasted in Amsterdam. Basically, any coffee that is just available in the European market would be roasted in Amsterdam. Their version of Espresso Roast is roasted there as well. Estima is their daily brew, so their supply of Estima may be roasted there too, but I’m not entirely sure about that.
@Nathan & @Jordan
Hi I work for Starbucks at Amsterdam Airport and I can tell you that all our coffees are roasted in Amsterdam. The plant in Amsterdam indeed roasts coffee for all Starbucks EMEA stores. From September we will switch to Pike Place Roast too as our daily offering, instead of Cafe Estima.
@Melody There are two different joint venture partners, National Rail for the train stations and HMS Host for the airport 🙂
Anyone here can tell me where I can purchase the amsterdam starcbucks coffee mug with a bicycle picture on the back?thanks
@kim
In Amsterdam itself, or check out ebay.com, ebay.nl or ask for it on fredorange.com 😉