Here's Where You Can Find The World's Biggest Starbucks
Located on Michigan Avenue in Chicago's luxurious Magnificent Mile district is the sixth Starbucks Reserve Roastery. As of its grand opening in 2019, this coffee-themed landmark holds the distinction of being the world's largest Starbucks. Spanning 35,000 square feet, its five stories house the namesake roastery, three bars, a massive steel cask, larger-than-life murals by local artists, and marvels of architecture and coffee technology.
As for what makes Starbucks Reserve unique, it is both the name for the brand's rarest and most exceptional beans and blends, as well as the specialty locations that serve them. While a select number of Starbucks Reserve stores serve the premium coffee, as of December 2023, there are only six of these sprawling roasteries in existence. With Chicago as its largest, the others are located in Seattle, New York City, Shanghai, Tokyo, and Milan.
Serving as a shrine to every coffee connoisseur's favorite beverage, a bucket list visit to the biggest Starbucks on Earth offers an educational and gustatory experience unlike any other.
Explore the largest Starbucks on the planet
The first floor of the Chicago roastery immerses you in coffee culture as soon as you enter. This is where the Starbucks Reserve Coffee Bar is located, and where you can enjoy espresso standards like lattes, cappuccinos, cold brews, Oleatos (olive oil-infused coffee), seasonal favorites, and select brews and microblends from the exclusive Starbucks Reserve.
From here, you can check out the actual roasting machine and the master roasters who operate it; the single-origin and special blends are roasted in small batches right before your eyes. You can also visit the Scooping Bar for a bag of your own freshly roasted beans.
Rising from the ground level is a towering 56-foot cask, which acts as the roastery's centerpiece, as well as its command center. The colossal, sculpted metal vessel serves as a temporary silo for the coffee beans after roasting, where they rest before being transported throughout the building via an elaborate system of pneumatic tubes. Ride the curved escalator around the giant cask and up to the second floor while taking in the 360-degree view of it all. The second floor is home to Rocco Princi's bakery, where you can fill up on authentic Italian breads, pastries, and sweets, as well as breakfast and lunch sandwiches, pizza, and entrees like lasagna and chicken cacciatore — all accompanied by a full menu of coffee drinks to choose from, of course.
The boozy Starbucks coffee bar that serves real alcohol
The Experiential Coffee Bar is located on the third floor. This is where the art and science of coffee-making get personal, allowing you to learn about novel brewing methods while tasting them for yourself. Sampler flights let you compare these disparate methods and flavors — the cold brew trio flight includes regular, nitro, and whiskey barrel-aged cold brews, and the origin flight serves up three different Starbucks Reserve coffees. Other flights give you a chance to try novel brewing methods like Clover and Chemex, and you can even indulge your sweet tooth with nitrogen-infused gelato.
The fourth floor is where you can find the Arriviamo Cocktail Bar — an actual bar managed by local mixologists who serve beer, wine, and classic cocktails, along with specialty tea and coffee-centric cocktails and mocktails. Must-tries include the signature Starbucks Reserve Espresso Martini and the Roastery Old Fashioned.
Your next stop on this floor should be the Barrel-Aged Coffee Bar, where you can learn about the process of aging green coffee beans in wooden barrels once used for wine, whiskey, and other liquors. The resulting beverages are spirit-free, but the unique flavor imparted by the barrel-aging process is unlike anything else. Depending on the weather, you can sip your drinks on the fifth-floor roof terrace, with its incredible vantage point looking down into the roastery, or out onto the expansive view of the city below.