There's been a lot of talk about Starbucks lately. In particular, how you're apparently not allowed to take photos in them and how they're suing three Haida guys. I got to thinking about their apparent global domination, and wondered just how many countries Starbucks is in. Judging from their Web site, they're only in 27 countries:
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Australia
Austria
Bahrain
Canada
China
Germany
Greece
Hong Kong
Israel |
Japan
Kuwait
Lebanon
Malaysia
Mexico
New Zealand
Philippines
Qatar
Saudi Arabia |
Singapore
Spain
South Korea
Switzerland
Taiwan
Thailand
United Arab Emirates
United Kingdom
United States |
A little analysis:
While Taiwan's nation status is questionable, we'll include them in our analysis. That means there's currently 193 countries in the world. So, Starbucks is only in 14% of them. However, those 27 countries make up 2,116,899,000 people (using numbers for the year 2000), or 35% of the world's population. That's a lot of coffee drinkers.
This question is of particular interest to me, as I spent the last two years in Starbuckless Ireland. Sure, Bahrain's got four, but how many does Dublin have (with twice the population of all of Qatar, which has five!) A big zero. Maybe they figure the Irish prefer the harder stuff. They'd be right.
Other notable countries that Starbucks is not in:
France - noted for its taste in coffee and distaste for American franchises.
Italy - see France.
All of Central and South America - ironic, as that's where all their coffee comes from.
Africa - what's with that? Surely those sub-Saharans could use a nice iced frappuccino.
Conclusions? I don't really have any, save that Starbucks global domination strategy seems to be moving along nicely. All this reminds me a little too much of this (prophetic?) article. Ironically, I don't even drink coffee, though maybe this whole runs in the family.
12:13:45 AM 
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