Daniel B.
Yelp
This Starbucks listing on Yelp is for the company's world headquarters, technically known as "Starbucks Center," at 2401 Utah Ave S in the SoDo neighborhood of Seattle, south of downtown. We met our friend, who works here, for lunch and got a tour of the campus. Our visit happened to coincide with Starbucks' 2024 Fall Launch event, which we attended. I had an absolute blast.
Being from Atlanta, when I Googled this place and saw the building, I was immediately reminded of Ponce City Market in Atlanta, a former Sears catalog building turned mixed-use development. The Sears building in Atlanta opened in 1926. This building, which now houses Starbucks Center, opened in 1915. It's also a former Sears catalog building. Starbucks moved its headquarters here in 1997.
From a public/tourist perspective, there's really not *that* much to see here except for the outside of the building, the office lobby, the Starbucks Reserve store, and a Princi bakery-cafe. Visiting the very first Starbucks store at Pike Place Market and the Starbucks Reserve Roastery and Tasting Room nearby at 1124 Pike St will suffice if you're an out-of-town visitor. The advantage to Starbucks Center is it's not nearly as crowded. Lines were minimal to non-existent during our visit.
We had lunch from Princi, with drinks from Starbucks Reserve, outside on the HQ patio. The food and drink were terrific. Read my review on Princi for descriptions of what we had, what the ambiance was like, and more: https://www.yelp.com/biz/princi-seattle-6
After registering as visitors at the front desk, our friend gave us a tour of all nine stories at Starbucks Center. This place was a maze. The offices were neat and what you'd expect of a giant, hip corporation on the West Coast. There were all sorts of layouts and rooms/offices, from the now-more-traditional open floor plans with dividers to breakout rooms and fun common-area spaces with various decor and memorabilia from Starbucks' 53-year history. All break rooms had real espresso machines. I liked how the stairs were integrated with the main spaces, instead of being isolated into stairwells off to the side. This made the floors feel more connected and seamless. This design made it feel "natural" for us to walk up all nine floors. More office buildings should be designed like this. I think it was on the 8th or 9th floor where I helped myself to some self-serve iced coffee.
A couple of the more memorable places we visited at HQ included a coffee bean tasting room. It looked like a lab. We weren't allowed to enter if we had any perfume, cologne, or other scents on because it would affect the professional tasting/smelling that was about to happen. We also visited the "top-secret" Tryer Center, Starbucks' innovation lab. We actually had to exit the main building and enter a different building from the outside to access the Tryer Center. It had its own separate security and check-in desk. Unlike the front desk at the main building, we had to sign waivers before entering the Tryer Center. In there, they had a mock Starbucks retail cafe, complete with a drive-thru window and menu "outside." There was a lot of activity. One group of employees looked like they were testing out cafe machinery.
At 2:00pm, lots of people made their way to the Fall Launch event where Casi Cielo seasonal coffee was served along with a smorgasbord of Starbucks' food from their fall menu. The latter included items like Starbucks' Pumpkin Cream Cheese Muffins, Pumpkin & Pepita Loaves, and Raccoon Cake Pops. Yum. There were live presentations, both on-stage in person and virtually from team members who video-conferenced in. It was like one of those Apple events where Steve Jobs took the stage to unveil the new iPod/iPhone/iPad, complete with lights and camera crew (albeit on a smaller scale), or dare I say, Living+ from Succession.
We took home complimentary bags of Starbucks' single-origin Guatemala Casi Cielo coffee beans from the event. Also, my wife purchased a bag of Starbucks Reserve Knob Creek Bourbon Whiskey Barrel-Aged Guatemala coffee beans ($42). We had both at home and they were excellent. Outstanding quality and delicious.
Everyone was friendly and seemed to be in good spirits (good morale).