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Starbucks is brewing up something new in Texas—and this time, it’s not just what’s in the cup. Next week, the coffee giant will open its first-ever 3D-printed store, a drive-thru-only location in Brownsville that looks more like the future of construction than your average café.
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Built with layers of concrete piped out by a giant robotic printer, the 1,400-square-foot structure is part of the company’s ongoing effort to modernize operations and trim costs. But does a 3D-printed café actually save money—or is this just a buzzworthy experiment?
Is 3D-printing more cost-effective?
Peri-3D, a German company, used a giant 3D printer to pump out layers of concrete mixture to create the structure. According to the Texas Department of Licensing and Regulation, the cost for building the small scale coffee shop was about $1.2 million.
The accounting platform Freshbooks says building a restaurant from the ground up can cost up to $2 million. However, a smaller-scale quick-serve restaurant may cost less to build. According to KRG Hospitality, it costs around $535 per square foot to build a quick serve restaurant, which comes out to $749,000 for a 1,400-square-foot structure like the new Starbucks—a bit less than the $1.2 price tag for the 3D-printed build.
Of course, the new method is a first for the brand. And builders say, the more they use the technology, the more efficient they are at it. In Georgetown, Texas, an entire community of 100 homes was recently built using 3D-printing. The company who built the community, Lennar, says they’re seeing costs drop with each build. Stuart Miller, chairman and co-CEO of Lennar, told CNBC earlier this year that the construction company says their costs and cycle time go down “by half” by adopting 3D-printing.
“This is significant improvement in evolving a housing market that has the ability to change over time and being more adaptable and more functional in providing affordable and attainable housing for a broader swath of the market,” said Miller.
Likewise, many building materials are becoming more expensive all the time. According to a 2023 report by construction cost data tracking firm Gordian, 82.5% of construction materials have skyrocketed since 2020, with the average increase at 19%. Now that the impact of tariffs is looming, those costs are expected to increase even more.
3D-printing is also much faster, meaning that projects can be completed in a fraction of the time, potentially drastically cutting labor costs. According to the World Economic Forum, 3D-printing can cost just 30% of what building structures the old-fashioned way costs. That’s why some companies are using it as a tool to address labor shortages and the housing crisis.