It will be the largest shop in Europe and above all the first roastery (ie the coffee will be roasted directly in the structure) in the Old Continent and the fifth in the world. September 6th Starbucks arrives in Italy and does so in grand style, inaugurating one in Milan retail space of 3.200 square meters, on several floors, in Piazza Cordusio, in the heart of the city, in the historic twentieth-century Palazzo delle Poste. After so many years of waiting, the most famous coffee shop in the world arrives in the country of espresso coffee: the one most distant, conceptually, from mugs served by Starbucks, but the two schools of thought will try to coexist, focusing on the many tourists and the Italians' desire for novelty. Also because the new store was designed specifically for the local customer, relying on the tradition of the coffee experience in Italy.
In reality there will be a bit of Italy all the same: the mega store will also offer pastries and bread baked on site by the master craftsman Rocco Princi, a brand well known to the Milanese and exclusive partner of Starbucks for all the new global roastery locations. The inauguration will also be in grand style: to unveil its first gem in the beautiful country, the Seattle giant has organized a suggestive open-air party in Piazza Cordusio for Thursday evening, under the patronage of the Municipality of Milan. The evening will be divided into two parts: at the beginning on the big screens set up for the occasion, a sort of film will be broadcast which will retrace the love story between Milan and Howard Schultz, the founder of Starbucks who has always been in love with the Milanese city, where – at least so he says – he had the intuition to found his "Siren".
The second half, on the other hand, will be dedicated to music and dance with the square - for the occasion closed to taxis and public transport - which will be transformed into an open-air theater to welcome the show by none other than the dancers of the Academy of the Scala. When the party is over, 1.200 people - by invitation - will enter the venue for the first time, which from the following day, Friday 7 September, will officially open its doors to the public. And the love story between Schultz and Milan seems decidedly destined to continue, so much so that Starbucks already has new openings in mind under the Madonnina. The roastery will remain only the one in Piazza Cordusio and will be managed directly by Starbucks, while coffee shops will be opened by the Percassi concessionaire: the first is already under construction in the Garibaldi area. In all, the Starbucks-Milan idyll will yield 350 jobs in the city.
The opening of the first Italian office and the suggestive party that will accompany it is also a strong image operation in a difficult moment for Starbucks. It will be for a sort of "Seattle curse", given the constant criticisms that have rained down on Amazon for some time, also founded in the city in the extreme North-West of the States, but recently the coffee giant, which with its 28 shops scattered around the world passes for being a cool, gay-friendly and environmentally aware multinational, ended up in the crosshairs of Swiss public television. The documentary "Starbucks without a filter, behind the scenes of coffee" casts a shadow especially on the treatment of its 350 employees, who would constantly feel breathing down their necks from top management.
Starbucks employees around the world are in fact rather treated, with all the negative meaning of the term, as partners, almost shareholders: ownership continually forces them to improve results and to compare them daily with those of the last 12 months. Using a hidden camera, in a Paris club, Swiss TV, for example, immortalized the director explaining to a new hire that “we have to serve the customer in less than 3 minutes. We have to be a bit like robots”. Not to mention, anyone who works at a Starbucks also has to do their own housekeeping. And that's not all: despite the declared ecological verve of patron Schultz, who has declared that he wants to eliminate plastic straws on its premises by 2020, the report also revealed that the 4 billion cups it sells each year are not biodegradable. Could the landing in Milan be an opportunity for a more coherent policy?
