But Roy Street Coffee & Tea is, in fact, owned by Starbucks -- an incarnation of management's idea to create "idea incubators." The 15th Avenue Coffee & Tea, also in Seattle, is another. "The Starbucks brand has shifted over time from being a specialty brand to being more
of a mass brand," says Harvard Business School marketing professor John Quelch. "There is a gap at the top of the market."
One of Starbucks' major missions with the cafés is "to reinvent the store experience," according to Arthur Rubinfeld, president of Starbucks global development. The new formats could "re-energize" Starbucks' upmarket appeal, Quelch believes.
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