Alibaba and Starbucks: The Story of Coffee and New Retail

　　At 18:00 on December 5, 2017, Starbucks Baking Workshop opened in Shanghai. The homepage of Starbucks Tmall flagship store, together with live broadcast platforms such as Taobao, Youku, and Yibo, broadcast, and other live broadcast platforms, broadcast the opening ceremony of the baking workshop online.

　　Alibaba and Starbucks: The story of coffee and new retail is the second roasting workshop opened by Starbucks outside its headquarters in Seattle and around the world. It is also the world's first truly smart store with Alibaba's technology support. This building, which looks like a coffee bean can, shows people the dream of new retail to reality.

　　Tell a good brand story

　　As a world-renowned coffee brand, Starbucks has never captured the hearts of thousands of customers not only delicious coffee beans and exquisite store decorations, but more about Starbucks telling every customer who comes to Starbucks a beautiful story of "from a green coffee bean to a cup of mellow coffee".

　　Starbucks is more like a magic carpet carrying coffee, drama and romance than just a coffee businessman.

　　In order to create a cultural "conflict and fusion", the Starbucks Baking Workshop opened in Shanghai has decorated more than 1,000 traditional Chinese seals and seal carving patterns on a giant two-story copper jar. As an ancient Western culture, coffee culture has profound cultural connotations just like Chinese characters. The combination of the two triggers a strong resonance.

　　In order to let customers experience the entire process of coffee roasting and experience all aspects from "raw beans to drinks", the bar at this Starbucks Roasting Workshop in Taikoo Hui, Shanghai is 27 meters long and consists of three wooden bars. Hundreds of baristas will make coffee for customers on site on this bar. Different coffee beans, different brewing methods, and detailed coffee craft explanations allow customers to taste coffee while immersing in the wonderful world of coffee.

　　In order to make the customer's experience better, this store even specially built a coffee library so that customers can relax with a cup of coffee and read a page of stories.

　　Such an arrangement does not seem to be directly sold in related shops, but it is a place to the minds of consumers, a silent publicity of Starbucks culture, and a great dissemination of Starbucks brand stories.

　　Just like Disney's gorgeous fairy tale world, just like the elegant winery in France, Starbucks needs this internet celebrity landmark baking workshop to open it to consumers for experience. In the future, perhaps Starbucks will become a coffee brand that does not make money by selling coffee.

　　Technology makes new retail fly

　　With the fierce market competition and the upgrading of consumer experience, online and offline integration practice of new retail, providing customers with better services has become an important choice for merchants including Starbucks. Unlike in the past, this Starbucks Baking Workshop in Shanghai has become a smart store that always surprises customers with the help of Alibaba's technical support.

　　Alibaba and Starbucks: The story of coffee and new retail customers can intuitively understand every detail of coffee bar, brewing utensils, etc. through AR technology, and can also awaken the "hidden" online menu query function. In terms of consumption sense, in this "coffee theater" with no dining brands in the entire store, just take out your mobile phone and "scan" to "scan" it, and it will open the "hidden mode" of the global retail industry. From a technical perspective, this is the first large-scale commercial application of AR large-scale scene recognition technology.

　　Alibaba and Starbucks: The story of coffee and new retail is checked into designated workshop attractions through Taobao. Consumers can obtain virtual badges and unlock customized workshop photography tools to experience the fun of becoming a star barista. Through Taobao mobile phone "scan" to get peripheral souvenirs only available in Starbucks Baking Workshop in Shanghai, you can place orders and deliver them to your home, realizing the online and offline omni-channel purchasing experience. After scanning the QR code for payment on Alipay, consumers can "shop" in the workshop while waiting for notifications. After the coffee is made, the Alipay App will push a meal pickup reminder.

　　Alibaba said that the AR technology solution adopted this time will be applied to Starbucks' more than 3,000 stores in China, which also marks that new retail will achieve a comprehensive integration from brands to business districts, business formats to cities, from food, drink, entertainment, food, clothing, housing and transportation to lifestyles.

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