Starbucks has a lot to offer Garfield students. It can be a great place for completing school work, downing liquid caffeine, or meeting up with friends on a snow day; it offers delectable nourishment for a respectable price. What more could you ask for?

Apparently, the answer is ambiance. That’s why Starbucks’ newest store, 15th Avenue Coffee and Tea, is deliberately branding itself as a local coffee house on Capitol Hill.

“The store got national press before it opened,” says Starbucks Coffee Company representative Jenna Elliot about the hot new 15th Avenue location.

15th Avenue Coffee and Tea is a wholly owned subsidiary of Starbucks, which is part of the reason why the coffee house looks so much different from other Starbucks shops. In a business sense, “wholly owned subsidiary” means that while 15th Avenue Coffee and Tea is not Starbucks, it is completely controlled by Starbucks. While the new coffee house shares the same mission as Starbucks, it seeks to emulate the mercantile style of Seattle’s first Starbucks store.

“This store had a small budget, a very small budget,” says Elliot.

To compensate for their lack of funds, the innovative new coffee shop has taken old furniture and “repurposed” it for their store. In fact, nearly everything in the store was recycled in some way. Even the front door was taken from a junkyard.

In addition to having seemingly perfected the art of recycling, 15th Ave Coffee and Tea effectively simulates the environment of a locally owned coffee shop. Its success can be attributed to a combination of the raw and organic feeling of the interior, as well as the choice in offered food and drink. 15th Avenue Coffee and Tea is the only Starbucks location in which you can order an $8.50 plate of smoked salmon with a glass of Californian Chardonnay. It would be difficult to visit 15th Avenue Coffee and not notice a warm, homey feeling inside. Many of the tables have vases of sunflowers, the baristas dance to the music, and you can have your food delivered to your table.

“It’s about making the human connection,” says Elliot. “That’s what a coffee house is all about.”

It may well be, but businesses are not unlike Vulcans in that they aim to live long and prosper.

As more and more caffeine consumers reject the dominant corporate chain that is Starbucks and seek out local coffee houses, some may enter 15th Avenue Coffee and Tea without realizing that they are actually in a Starbucks owned store. In fact, Starbucks appears to be de-emphasizing its involvement with the new store and presenting it as an authentic local coffee shop.

Arian Hasenpusch, barista extraordinaire of Caffe Ladro, was surprised to learn about Starbucks’ new marketing strategy. Unlike Starbucks’ new store, Caffe Ladro is well known as a neighborhood coffee shop.

“If [our customers] went to 15th Avenue and found out it was a Starbucks, they would be taken aback,” says Hasenpusch. “I would feel cheated.”

The ethics of this new marketing strategy are debatable, and some have even ventured to label it as consumer fraud. Despite some negative reactions to the new store, however, confidence levels on 15th Avenue appear high.

“We aren’t trying to hide anything,” says one woman working at 15th Avenue Coffee and Tea. “Once you come into the store and see what we are, our authenticity speaks for itself.”

The store already seems to have established a niche for itself on Capitol Hill, and it is a proud supporter of St. Mary’s, the nearby food bank. According to an employee, any leftover food unsold by the end of the day is donated to St. Mary’s. The donated food is then distributed at the food bank, and is also delivered to those who can’t access a food bank.

When asked about the future of mercantile Starbucks-owned coffee houses, Elliott replied:

“We know at this point that there will be at least three in Seattle.”