There is a new reason to make the winding drive up Tops Road in Cebu City. Starbucks has opened a store at TOPS in Busay, roughly 2,000 feet above sea level, where the main attraction is not on the menu board. It is the wall of glass looking out over Cebu City and the sea.
The store opened on October 30, 2026, and by that Friday afternoon it was already nearly full. Photographs from opening day show small tables pressed against floor-to-ceiling windows on the city side of the room, with customers settled in for the view even as rain ran down the glass. That tells you most of what you need to know about this location. People did not come just for coffee. They came for a seat by the window.
The Window Seats Are the Point
The new store is its own building, a low pavilion in dark stone with a slatted wood roofline, sitting a few steps outside TOPS at the top of Tops Road. It is not a counter tucked inside The Circle, the multi-level viewing plaza at the site. Inside, one long room runs under a wood-slat ceiling, with booths and armchairs along the walls and a patterned tile floor leading toward the glass.
The layout makes the hierarchy plain. The two-tops against the window are the seats everyone wants, and on opening afternoon nearly all of them were taken. The rest of the room filled up behind them. If you picture a typical Starbucks, with the bar as the center of gravity, this one flips the script. Here the view is the center, and the bar supports it.
That also means the weather is part of the experience in a way it rarely is at a neighborhood store. Busay can sit in cloud, and on a gray afternoon the city can fade in and out behind the glass. A clear morning or a clear evening after dinner, when the city lights come on, is when this store earns its keep.
What the Trip Actually Costs
Getting there takes a little planning, and the price of the view is separate from the price of the drink. The TOPS entrance fee is 100 pesos for adults, 70 pesos for seniors and persons with disabilities with ID, and free for children under two. Parking adds another 100 pesos. A shuttle from the IT Park transport terminal runs 200 pesos round trip with the entrance included.
On the menu board photographed on October 30, Refreshers ran 185 pesos for a tall, 200 for a grande, and 215 for a venti. A caramel macchiato was 200 pesos tall and 215 grande. So a grande caramel macchiato with the view works out to 315 pesos if you take the shuttle, or 415 if you drove up alone and paid the gate and parking on top of the drink. None of that is a complaint. It is simply the honest math for a destination store, and worth knowing before you head up the mountain.
The store itself keeps generous hours for a mountaintop stop: 10 a.m. to midnight, every day. That late close is what makes the after-dinner option real. You can drive up after dark, order something warm, and watch the city light up below you.
When to Go
If you can choose, skip the first rush and pick a weekday morning in November. The store opened on the eve of the Undas weekend, when crowds were already heavy, and the road up is winding enough that a quieter weekday is the smarter play. Check the sky before you leave, too. On a cloudy day you may pay the gate fee for a very nice Starbucks and no view at all.
TOPS has been a Cebu landmark for decades, growing from a simple viewing deck into a leisure destination with restaurants, attractions, and a souvenir shop. A Starbucks at the top fits that evolution neatly. It gives visitors a comfortable place to linger, and it gives the mountain another reason to draw people up after dark. For regulars in Cebu, it is a new kind of third place: part coffeehouse, part lookout, best enjoyed slowly and preferably by a window.
