Inside the world's largest Starbucks store and roastery

Seattle-based coffee company Starbucks has its largest store and roastery in the world's largest and most populous city, Shanghai.

The interactive mega-store, situated on upmarket shopping strip Nanjing Rd, includes a live roastery, food bars, a "coffee library", tasting rooms and a retail shop, which attracts between 7000 and 10,000 customers each day.

Four hundred employees service the mega-store. The location roasts 64 bags of coffee each day and approximately 1.1 million kilograms annually.

Starbucks manufacturing operations manager Ryan Lucas said the hybrid store was one of just a few Reserve Roasteries in the world which aimed to be destinations for coffee drinkers as opposed to a place they stop by when at the mall.

"The Reserve stores in China are exclusively supplied [coffee] from our manufacturing [plant], and then we produce some espresso for various markets throughout China," Lucas said.

The mega-store, which opened in December uses augmented reality through e-commerce giant Alibaba's Taobao app to give customers an interactive guide of each of the stations in the 30,000sq ft location.

Starbucks' live roastery in the Shanghai Reserve store. Photo / Aimee Shaw

China has become Starbucks' second-largest and fastest growing market. There are 3000 Starbucks stores in China and 600 in Shanghai alone.

The Shanghai Reserve Roastery is one of five others expected to open before 2020.

Packaged coffee on the production line at the Shanghai Reserve Roastery. Photo / Aimee Shaw

There is a Reserve Roastery store in Seattle, and three more will open in Milan, New York and Tokyo in the next six months.

"Later next year, we will be opening another one in Chicago, so this Shanghai store will be the largest one in the world until Chicago opens," Lucas said.

The interior of each store is influenced by its location, he said.

Starbucks plans to have 5000 stores in China by 2021.