VIDEO: Starbucks gives new meaning to ’mobile order’ in Colorado
Talk about Starbucks to-go!
Motorists in Northglenn, Colo., shared the road for a few hours earlier this month with a moving Starbucks store. The modular 450 square-foot store originally opened in 2012 on Northglenn’s Bannock Street and West 104th Avenue. The drive-thru and walk-up location, made from recycled shipping containers and clad in reclaimed Wyoming wood, proved to be so popular that the company decided to open a larger café nearby and move the modular store across town. To accomplish that feat, the 450-square-foot-store was hoisted off its foundation by a crane and slowly moved by a double flatbed trailer about a mile east to its new home on the other side of I-25 on Washington Street, navigating the city streets.
The portable store is one of 45 pre-fabricated modular locations Starbucks has opened since 2011, and the first one to be moved to a new site. Built to LEED® certification standards, these locations incorporate sustainable strategies that save water, energy and improve air quality throughout the construction process.
These stores are built off-site using shipping containers, prior to delivery and installation creating an opportunity for the company to extend into sites not designed for traditional store locations while minimizing the environmental footprint generally associated with net new builds. Through this store typology, Starbucks is able to reuse reclaimed materials throughout the design as well as reduce construction waste by avoiding site demolition in both the old and new locations. Through the first ever relocation of a pre-fab store in Northglenn, Starbucks was able to create two unique store locations, using one single pre-fab store.
Although the store itself may have been just inching along in traffic – the relocation was done in record time. The company was able to close and re-open the new one on Feb. 19 in just 21 days with virtually no waste.
The company has built more than 1,200 LEED® certified stores in 20 countries and is the largest builder of green stores in our sector, accounting for 20 percent of LEED®-certified retail projects globally.
