SBUXStarbucks Corporation

Starbucks sells a habit rather than coffee: repeat visits, an app, and a loyalty programme holding prepaid balances.

The network mixes company-operated cafés with licensed ones; in the United States the former dominate, abroad the latter. The average ticket is small but visit frequency is high, so the business is sensitive not to one-off purchases but to the durability of the habit. Digital ordering and prepaid cards supply working capital essentially free.

The principal markets are the United States and China. The Chinese business has become the main source of uncertainty in recent years: local chains compete aggressively on price, and comparable sales there behave differently from home. Overall growth comes from opening stores and raising prices rather than from more traffic in existing ones.

A separate factor is labour cost and the unionisation drive in US cafés, which affects both expenses and the brand's public image. The company pays a dividend; its results are noticeably more sensitive to discretionary consumer spending than grocery retail.