Did you stop for coffee on your way to work this morning? Take a walk during your afternoon break for a java pick-me-up? If so, there’s a good chance you visited your local Starbucks coffee shop. But no matter if you have a daily Venti habit, you’re a fan of Frappuccinos on hot summer days and Pumpkin lattes on rainy October nights, or you can’t help but notice the green nautical logo everywhere, you may find these 50 facts about the world’s most popular coffee brand steamy and delicious:
1. What started in 1971 out as a small local coffee shop in Seattle has turned into the biggest coffee chain the world has ever seen, with 23,768 locations around the world, including more than 13,000 in the U.S.
2. Starbucks, which operates under ticker symbol SBUX on the NASDAQ stock exchange, is worth $70.9 billion and saw a record $19.2 billion in sales last year, ranking #52 as the world’s most valuable brands.
3. It’s still growing in leaps and bounds around the world. Since 2010, 4,678 new stores have opened– an average of 2.5 per day!
4. The Starbucks brand is so recognizable that they don’t even have to advertise their name anymore, just their logo. Don’t believe me? Take a look at their cups and you’ll see that they don’t even list the Starbucks name on there anymore, just their logo.
5. Speaking of cups, Starbucks uses 2.3 billion paper cups per year to hold all of that coffee.
6. They also use more than 93 million gallons of milk every year, which is enough to fill 155 Olympic-sized swimming pools!
7. Just how ubiquitous are Starbucks stores? If you travel from Boston to New York and then to Philadelphia, you’ll ever be more than 10 miles from a Starbucks the entire trip.
8. But that’s nothing compared the place with the highest concentration of Starbucks stores – Santa Fe Springs, California. Residents of that town must be very well caffeinated with 560 Starbucks stores within a 25-mile area!
9. Starbucks now has 191,000 employees or “Partners” as they call them (more than the combined populations of Denmark, Greenland, and Bermuda!) It’s gained a reputation for taking good care of their employees per founder and CEO Howard Shultz’s lead. In fact, Starbucks ranks as the #80 firm on this list of America’s best employers, and health care is a big part of that. Starbucks spends $300 million every year on healthcare insurance for all employees that work at least 20 hours per week, which is more than it spends on coffee beans!
10. The average patron visits a Starbucks 6 times per month but loyal customers – defined by the top 20%– get their Starbucks fix 16 times per month.
11. If you consider coffee type, size, flavor, milk options, etc. there are over 87,000 possible drink combinations at Starbucks – and 36,00 combinations of Frappuccinos alone!
12. That means you could drink 2 new Starbucks coffees per day and not have to reorder for more than 119 years!
13. Did you know that Starbucks has a Secret Menu? It’s true – with creative coffee creations like the Captain Crunch Berry Frappuccino, Spiced Apple Chai, and the Caramel Snickerdoodle Macchiato available at some locations for patrons who dare to ask. There are even several websites dedicated the ‘Bucks Secret Menu. http://starbuckssecretmenu.net
14. Do you enjoy the morning “pick-me-up” you get after drinking a Starbucks coffee? That’s because their Grande coffee has 320 milligrams of caffeine, which is more than 4 times the caffeine contained in a Red Bull.
15. Unfortunately, their flavored drinks also contain an alarming amount of sugar. In fact, just a tall Classic Chai Latte – which is one of their least sugary flavored drinks – contains 32 grams of sugar, while the recommended daily maximum sugar intake is just 24 grams. Whoa!
16. A staple of the Starbucks point of purchase experience used to be checking out the CDs they sold by featured artists, including special Starbucks mixes and releases. But as of 2015, they stopped selling CDs and moved to a limited digital format and free samples of songs, as they desired to “evolve with the music business.”
17. In fact, the first CD Starbucks ever carried was a Kenny G album in 1994. But selling CDs wasn’t Starbuck’s only foray into music, as they actually formed an independent record label, with Paul McCartney coming aboard as their first signee.
18. More than $925 billion in Starbucks gift cards are activated every year, enough to buy over 200 billion Frappuccinos!
19. There are now more Starbucks stores than McDonalds franchises in the U.S.
20. Is a Starbucks store opening up in your community? Don’t fret because that might actually be a good thing for your home’s value. A study conducted by Quartz found that home appreciation rates double when a Starbucks first moves into a neighborhood, and they’re often referred to as an “anchor of neighborhood gentrification.”
21. The founders of Starbucks wanted to name their coffee franchise “Pequod” at first, a reference to the name of the boat in Moby Dick. But the story goes that after one of their friends said “No one’s going to drink a cup of Pee-quod!” they choose the name we know today.
22. What’s the most popular Starbucks drink ever? Well that’s just plain coffee, but each city also has a favorite specialty drink, such as Portland, Oregon (eggnog latte), Phoenix, Arizona (iced caramel macchiato), and Memphis, Tennessee (white chocolate mocha).
23. You may be familiar with Starbuck’s traditional sizes, the Tall (12oz), Grande (16oz) and Venti (24oz) options, and by now, you’re probably familiar with their Trenta (30oz), which they added a few years back. But did you know that you could order a size smaller than their Tall? A “Short” or “Kids size” 8oz option is still available though not on the menu, and this was one of the first sizes offered at Starbucks stores.
24. And that Trenta? With a titanic 916 milliliters of liquid, it’s actually is slightly bigger than the capacity of the average human stomach of 900ml.
25. Running a tad early (or late) for that needed cup-o-Joe? Starbucks franchises actually have a universal “10-Minute Rule” that mandates each store should keep its doors open 10 minutes before and after official opening and closing times to accommodate go-getters and stragglers.
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Look for part 2 of this blog coming soon, with 25 more facts about Starbucks!