Starbucks is getting in on the Tiny House trend with shipping container coffee shops. Forget tiny houses, Starbucks is pushing the trend into the commercial realm, creating micro coffee shops made out of old shipping containers.
The concept itself is nothing new for the brand, which made its first shipping container store — coming in at a diminutive 450 square feet, or roughly the size of a two-car garage — back in 2012.
Starbucks’ Seattle headquarters overlooks the Puget Sound, and the land was covered with shipping containers, prompting employees to dream up ways to make use of old ones. They gathered the old containers, transforming them into stores that are essentially just a drive thru, built totally to LEED certification.
Not only was it good for the Earth, from a recycling perspective, it helps the chain’s bottom line: Now they can squeeze into spaces previously deemed too small for a Starbucks. So basically, a day could come when you don’t have to go through the agony of crossing the street to go to a Starbucks. There could be one everywhere. Way to go for a company to integrate their expansions with a small global footprint, as well as using shipping containers to convert and repurpose, reuse and recycle. We like this trend. Hope to see more expansions utilize this approach for business growth and respect for the planet and our limitations.
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