Hailing from Oakland, halfway across the planet, cult coffee brand Blue Bottle Coffee first landed in Japan in 2015, and then quickly grew into a network of 16 outposts it manages nationwide there today. The very first Blue Bottle Coffee café opened at Kiyosumi-Shirakawa, a neighbourhood east of Tokyo‘s Ginza shopping district, and the venue came with a full-fledged coffee roastery which would sustain the brand’s further growth in the Land of the Rising Sun with fresh local supplies. The café section has seen a recent renewal and expanded to 47 seats across an area of 184 sqm. (1,981 sq.ft.) and which aims to boost the customer experience to a new level. Innovations include the opening of the so-called C Bar, a counter staffed by highly trained baristas where coffee aficionados can ask all their coffee-related questions, in addition to a training lab equipped with espresso machines. The latter space offers customers a variety of specific classes, such as drip classes and cupping classes. The coffee menu has also seen major tweaks, most notably the addition of Blue Bottle Instant Coffee, and for sweet tooths, the introduction of specially developed desserts in collab with celebrated chefs Yuichi Goto and Kazuhiro Nakamura.
Blue Bottle Coffee
1-4-8 Hirano (Kiyosumi-Shirakawa)
Tokyo 135-0023
Daily 8-7
Publishers Note
Just to be clear – superfuture® is a design blog and not a political commentator. No surprise there. The scope of our content has always been global and borderless, however that can often mean covering projects in countries where we will not agree with the politics or actions of those countries. In a world that’s as screwed up as ever right now, the focus of our support is to those designers, architects and other creatives who aim to make the world a more liveable one – as opposed to people that try their hardest to destroy it. So if a project hits our desk and we like it based on its design credentials, we may choose to publish regardless of its location or creators nationality. superfuture® has always been inclusive and hopes for all current wars, aggression, violence, hate and extremism to end.