SmartShanghai gets a look inside Starbucks Reserve Roastery. Coffee grandes at the end of the world.

Big news for Shanghai coffee drinkers and everyone else with a mortal soul up for grabs in this world, as retail coffee giant Starbucks unveiled to a massive, international media presence this morning the: a “new multi-sensory, fully immersive coffee experience” that also operates as the vortex and harnesser of supernatural cosmic forces that the Starbucks top brass hopes to utilize to rip a hole in the fabric of the space-time continuum, thereby collapsing our dimension into a theoretical “negative zone universe”, releasing untold world-ending Lovecraftian terrors onto humanity as we know it.“You guys seen The Mist?” said Starbucks Executive CEO Howard Schultz this morning at the media conference.“Kind of like The Mist. But like — The Mist meets the whole ‘third wave coffee’ thing.”Officially open to the public tomorrow on December 6 in Shanghai, the multi-story HKRI Taikoo Hui -located structure is designed to present a “coffee wonderland” to guests, conceptualized, according to the press release, to reflect the “journey of coffee — from the moment the farmer picks the cherry to when it is poured into the cup “… and also, conversely designed so that when the time is nigh, during the next bloodmoon, the arcane and demonic machinery squatting in wait in the structure’s underbelly might lurch onto a immutable doomsday course and tear humankind asunder like gruesome confetti.“The Roastery represents our deep commitment to the Chinese market,” said Starbucks Executive CEO Howard Schultz.“But seriously who’s seen The Mist? No? The Cabin in the Woods?”And ita wonderland inside. A truly multifaceted experience, the Starbucks Reserve Roastery hosts a main bar, a “pairing bar” (for coffee and food), a 27-meter long bar for their “Cold Brew Towers”, Princi, an acclaimed artisanal bakery making its debut in Asia on the site, a “coffee library”, tasting rooms, a retail clothing area, and more.(More being the essential orphic machinery to plunge the world into permanent twilight from which there shall be no dawn.)Old world coffee technology — copper casks, silos, rolling assembly, lines, and a “symphony of copper pipes”, so named for the sound the beans make when they travel through them (souls) — operates side by side with cutting-edge digital technology in real-time, in-store online ordering. (Along with, of course, occult magical forces representing the darkest knowledge handed down a millennium by a secret cabal of the evil and the damned.)Every details has been considered, even the aerial view; seen from above the Roastery resembles a giant coffee bean.(Until, you know… its true purpose becomes realized and it transforms into a giant pentagram gushing red plasma into the sky, ripping the heavens in half and showering the world in pestilence and despair.)The visual centerpiece is the gorgeous and ornate two-story Copper Cask, which weighs over four tons and measures over eight meters in height — twice the size of the one in Seattle. It's designed to hold freshly-roasted coffee beans, stored until they reach their full flavor. And also maybe like a super nice bespoke coffee mug for Cthulhu when he wants to have some "me time" with a nice Smoked Butterscotch Latte.So!The time is nigh, Shanghai, the time is nigh, for one and all. The Starbucks Reserve Roastery is open to the public tomorrow. Maybe wait a bit to check it out for yourself. There's going to be mobs at this thing.But dont wait too long 'cause... well,***