Last spring, I spent a couple of weeks in Milan visiting the world’s fair—Expo ’15—a food-themed international exposition. Naturally, coffee was everywhere. Caffeine fuels Italy, and the fair had an entire section devoted to coffee and the countries that produce it.

Milan is also the city that inspired Howard Schultz more than 30 years ago to turn the Seattle-based coffee retailer at the Pike Place Market, Starbucks into a global network of cafes serving coffee drinks, including the now ubiquitous grande latte. Curiously, though, there was no Starbucks in Milan, or in fact all of Italy. I checked on my phone at the time and if I remember correctly, the nearest Starbucks was across the Alps in Lucerne Switzerland.

Why would Starbucks not be at ground zero? One couldn’t help but get the feeling it was a matter of insecurity as much as anything else. How would they measure up? Milano is a city that takes it coffee seriously, and excellent coffee for granted—it’s everywhere. It’s also a city with style, a center of design and fashion where major global brands are highly visible. People care about things being done right. 

Now, however, Starbucks has announced that it’s finally ready to conquer its insecurities and Italy. The chain says they will open Italian Starbucks in Milan and other cities starting in early 2017. The Seattle Times calls it “the cradle of espresso.”

Schultz described their approach this way: “Now we’re going to try, with great humility and respect, to share what we’ve been doing and what we’ve learned through our first retail presence in Italy. Our first store will be designed with painstaking detail and great respect for the Italian people and coffee culture.”

They’ll have their challenges.

One is simply the quality of the coffee. During my trip to Milan, I got into drinking cappuccino—not something I normally do, but it became almost a ritual. When I returned to Seattle, I immediately went to my local Starbucks to resume the habit and, to be frank, Starbucks’ cappuccino is not very good by comparison—flat, sour, uninspired. Starbucks is going to have to be humble indeed, but also it’s going to have to raise its game.

That doesn’t mean they can’t succeed. While Italy is the home of the slow-food movement and local cuisines are strong, the Italians aren’t above enjoying chains. Controversially there was a McDonald’s at the world’s fair, a fair that opened to major protests from the city’s anti-corporate anarchist community. Still, visitors seemed to like it. Even more, it included an Italian-style espresso bar—Mc Cafe—which offered decent coffee drinks and pastries better than those you’d find at your average Starbucks. In other words, even the folks who go to an Italian McDonalds have higher expectations.

In Italy, much coffee drinking is a kind of stand-up experience—a fuel stop en route to somewhere else. For one thing, baristas seem to be faster, much more proficient, and less friendly. They don’t ask you if you want scones or how your day is going, they produce your drink with expertise and speed. Customers seem to know what they want, there’s much less hemming and hawing while they browse the pastries or drink menu. Drinks are simpler too.

The notion of the “third place”—Starbucks as a kind of home away from home, or office away from the office—is not the usual concept for Italian cafes. On a recent rainy Sunday, I went to Starbucks in Madison Park and it was packed like a refugee center. These weren’t people looking for a jolt, they were looking for an escape. It’ll be interesting to see if Starbucks can find a similar role in Italy, a congregation point for people with laptops who just want to get out of the house for a bit.

If the coffee and design are good, I suspect they will.