The United States and China came top in the ranking of countries with the largest number of Starbucks stores worldwide as of September 2018. The famous U.S. coffeehouse chain had the most stores in its home country accounting for over 14 thousand stores.

Starbucks just keeps on growing

Over the past 10 years the number of Starbucks stores worldwide have increased annually - the only exception being in 2009 where a dip was recorded due to the global financial crisis. The financial crisis didn’t hinder the chain for long as there have been over 12 thousand new Starbucks stores opened globally in the past 10 years - the store count growing by over 70 percent since 2008.

Is China becoming the new global Starbucks capital?

China has only a quarter of the number of Starbucks stores of the U.S. - however the growth rate over the past 10 years has been extremely high, reaching almost 700 percent. The coffeehouse chain recently laid out plans to compete with KFC to become the fastest-growing Western food chain in China. It wants to do this by opening a new store every 15 hours until the year 2022. While it may not reach the same number of stores as in the U.S., it is speeding headfirst towards a similar store count if it continues with its rapid expansion plans.