New School Year, New Starbucks

And you thought you were the only one creative enough to restyle yourself for the new school year.

After two weeks of renovations, the Starbucks store located in the Garage unveiled its new assets Saturday—including a row of wooden booths, a larger space for customers waiting on line, and a brighter tenor. Remember those inutile velvet curtains and those circular tables that you could never seem to claim? All gone. (The Ventis are staying, though.)

According to shift supervisor Alyssa Criscuoll, the popular locale had been completely gutted and renovated to cater to student customers, with a larger cafe area that offers more seating and a larger waiting space to decrease crowding. Read on to find out what else Criscuoll says has replaced "that really early 90's orange thing we had going on."

Criscuoll says every store in the Starbucks chain is examined for renovations every few years, and she expects many other stores to undergo similar changes—plus, the store in the Garage had several pieces of old equipment that needed to be replaced anyway.

Not to mention the ambiance was less than current.

"Aesthetically, the colors are completely different—more black and white with dark wood, instead of that really early 90's orange thing we had going on," Criscuoll says of the renovated store. On a large black board hanging on the wall, she plans to paint a map of the world that illustrates the origins of the store's coffee.

The renovations were corporate decisions beyond the purview of the store's staff, but Criscuoll and some of her fellow workers wish they had been consulted on parts of the planning. As a result of the renovations, the staff has lost some wiggle room "behind the lines," or the barrier that keeps workers behind the food bar and cash register.

Though most of the customers Criscuoll has spoken with praised the "roomier and welcoming" renovations, one individual offered some criticism of the store's auditory drawback—the high ceiling and open space could yield poor acoustics.

"It gets really loud easily, so studying might be a little more challenging in the store," Criscuoll says. So much for changing it up for students.