Hasta La Ideas

Following a couple of big rough patches after a decade of uncomfortably explosive growth, this has been the year for Starbucks‘ reinvention. Thus far, we’ve seen Arthur Rubinfeld come back, a complete LEED-happy redesign in the works for all their stores, and most recently, a virutually-brandless secret test shop, built to try out their new, more neighborhood-y ideas. Now they’ve started trying things out internationally with their first shop redesign at one of their (presumably thousand) London locations. Flickr-er Tiki Chris was on hand to take a batch of snapshots of the new look and it appears that it follows what’s been planned out thus far for the chain’s facelift, from the more communal layout to a generally more subdued atmosphere. Though we wonder, as nice as this all is, will re-doing all bazillion of their outlets to fit this model actually help them in any considerable way? We remember the first time or two we went into a Starbucks and thought, “Hey, this is nice.” But now, decades later, from Beirut to Boston, they all look the same. So will this turn out to be just a move from one homogenous interior to another? We’ll be interested to see.

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