Dive Brief:

• Starbucks unveiled its first Teavana tea bar yesterday in New York City. The stunningly gorgeous establishment won rave reviews.
• The opening comes roughly a year after Starbucks paid $620 million for Teavana, which operates retail stores, mostly in malls. Starbucks has more ambitious plans for the brand, intending to open tea bars across the country and, as Starbucks CEO Howard Schultz told USAToday, "do for tea what we've done for coffee."
• Teavana bars are designed to foster lingering, rather than buying a cup to go. Food is available. Coffee is not.

Dive Insight:

So look, we love Starbucks coffee. Most every coffee drinker we know loves that stuff. And we admire the company's accomplishments to no end. But every Starbucks we see reminds us of some of the coffee shops we adored that were pushed out of business by the behemoth from Seattle. We're not going to let that happen again! So if you find yourself on the Upper East Side of Manhattan, do us a favor: skip Teavana and walk a few blocks further to our favorite tea bar on earth.