Starbucks Coffee

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Starbucks Coffee - What Commercial Real Estate Investors Should Know

Company Summary
Starbucks Coffee, sometimes referred to as Fourbucks Coffee is the largest coffeehouse chain in the world. It opened its first store in 1971 in Seattle's waterfront Pike Place Market by three partners: Jerry Baldwin, Zev Siegel, and Gordon Bowker to sell high-quality coffee beans and equipment. In 1982, Howard Schultz, the current Chairman and CEO joined the company as the Director of Marketing. He was impressed by the popularity of the espresso bars in Italy after he traveled to Milan in 1983. Back to the US, he convinced the founders of Starbucks to sell both coffee beans and espresso beverages. However, the idea was rejected so he left the company and founded Il Giornale coffee bar chain in 1985. In 1987 Howard Schultz and Il Giornale bought Starbucks with $3.8M and renamed Il Giornale coffee bars to Starbucks and turned it into the Starbucks you know today. The company went public with the symbol SBUX in June 26, 1992 at $17/share with 140 stores. Since then the stock has split 5 times. As of May 2008, SBUX is traded at about $16, down from the high of $39.43 in November 2006.
Starbucks opened the first overseas store in Tokyo, Japan in 1996. The company currently has about 16,000 stores, employs 172,000 partners, AKA employees as of September 2007 in 44 countries. It has annual sales of over $10B with most recent quarterly revenue being $2.526B. About 85% of Starbucks revenue comes from company-operated stores.
Starbucks does not franchise its operations and has no plans to franchises in foreseeable future. In North America, most stores are company-operated. You may see some Starbucks stores inside Target, major supermarkets, University campuses, Hospitals, and Airports. These stores are operated under licensing agreements to provide access to real estate which would otherwise unavailable. Starbucks receives licensee fees and royalties from these licensed locations. At these licensed retail locations, the workers are considered employees of that specific retailer, not Starbucks. As of 2008 it has 7087 company-operated stores and 4081 licensed stores in the US. Internationally it has 1796 company operated stores and 2792 joint-venture or licensed stores in 43 foreign countries. The pace of expansion is slowing down as the company plans to open 1020 US stores in 2008, less than 400 stores in 2009 down from 1800 stores in2007. In addition, it also plans to close 100 stores in 2008.
Risks to Real Estate Investors
Starbucks coffee buildings remain a popular investment for many investors. When you consider investing in a property occupied by Starbucks, you need to understand the following risks of your investment:
Recession-sensitivity: a hungry man can survive with a Big Mac & fries but can live without a four-buck Frappuccino. This means Starbucks is very sensitive to economy downturn as seen in 2007 and 2008 compared to Burger Kings and McDonald's. This may be the main reason sales at stores in the US open at least a year are expected a mid single-digit percentage decline,

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