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Starbucks sells coffee, tea, and food through its own cafés and earns money from every drink and snack customers buy there.
Starbucks is the world's best-known coffee shop chain. People walk in for a latte, an iced coffee, a breakfast sandwich, or just a place to sit with a laptop, and they pay for the convenience, the consistency, and the feeling of the brand. The company runs its own stores rather than selling franchises in most places, so it controls the experience from the espresso machine to the loyalty app.
The money comes from customers at the counter and through the drive-thru, plus mobile orders and delivery. Starbucks also sells packaged coffee and ready-to-drink bottles through grocery stores under deals with partners like Nestlé, but those are a smaller slice of the pie. Most revenue is simply people buying drinks, one cup at a time, at roughly 40,000 stores worldwide. About half of those stores are in the United States, and a huge share of them are company-operated, which means Starbucks keeps the store-level profit but also pays the rent and wages. The company's real engine is its loyalty program and its habit of raising prices gently over time. Members load money onto the Starbucks app, which gives the company cash upfront and keeps customers coming back for stars and free drinks. That app is one of the largest prepaid payment systems in the US, and it makes Starbucks less dependent on cash and more able to track what people order. Customers choose it over a local café because they know exactly what they'll get, and over a cheaper rival because the store feels like a small treat.
The business has real vulnerabilities. Labor costs are rising, and baristas in the US have been organizing unions, which could change how stores are run. Coffee bean prices swing with weather in Brazil and Vietnam, and competition is fierce from cheaper chains and from fast-food places pouring their own lattes. Starbucks has also been spending heavily to remodel stores and speed up service, and it pays a dividend and buys back shares with its cash. In 2024 the company brought in Brian Niccol from Chipotle to run it, betting that a fresh leader could fix slowing sales and get the lines moving again.
Saved answer · last researched 22 Oct 2026