Starbucks recently opened Starbucks Reserve Roastery in Shanghai, which in addition to being its largest so far and the first in China, is also the first Starbucks location to offer customers an immersive in-store augmented reality experience. The in-store AR experience was created under Chinese e-commerce giant Alibaba and involves a special smartphone app that allows customers to walk around the 30,000-square-foot store and roastery using AR features to view information, such as how a copper roasting cask works. For example, a customer can stand in front of the roasting cask in the store and, via their mobile phone, peer inside the cask. They can then watch an animated version of newly roasted beans dropping into the cask and virtually see them resting before they are whisked through copper pipes to the coffee bars. They can also read about the process a bean goes through on the way to becoming a cup of coffee. The experience extends to Alibaba's online marketplace, Tmall, where shoppers can purchase merchandise and whole bean coffee for home delivery, or register for specially curated coffee tasting experiences.

see press release