US Coffee Store Number Tops 40,000

By Douglas A. McIntyre Published Jul 5, 8:02AM EDT

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US Coffee Store Number Tops 40,000 — © ablokhin / iStock Editorial via Getty Images

China’s Starbucks-adjacent chain, Luckin Coffee, has recently expanded to the U.S. The Beijing coffee giant, which was founded in 2017, exploded throughout China, surpassing Starbucks within the Asian country in both sales and number of locations. China now has over 20,000 Luckin stores. The unique coffee outlet functions without the use of cashiers, utilizing a mobile-only model. They prioritize efficiency and convenience. And now, America is getting a taste of the extremely popular coffee chain. In early July, Luckin opened its first two U.S. stores, both in Manhattan. Customer reviews are positive, highlighting the ease of ordering, low prices, and fun flavors (like pineapple cold brew).

Aside from the newly arrived Luckin, demand for coffee outside the home has been hot enough to drive the number of U.S.-branded coffee shops in America above 40,000. The market value of the companies that own these brands has almost reached $50 billion. According to the World Coffee Portal, these figures are above pre-pandemic levels on average. Its experts expect that figure to top 45,000 by September 2028.

The figure would not be anywhere close to 40,000 if it were not for Starbucks Corp. (NASDAQ: SBUX | SBUX Price Prediction). It has 16,000 U.S. locations, followed by Dunkin’ at just over 9,400.

The store count could rise even more than forecast. COVID-19 hit the industry hard. Project Café USA 2024, World Coffee Portal’s new study, reports, “amid surging industry optimism nearly one-fifth of operators have yet to fully recover from pandemic trading pressures.” The other is the tremendous size of the American coffee market. According to the National Institutes of Health, 174 million people over 20 in the United States drink coffee daily. Other research shows coffee consumption statistics that are even larger than that.

Starbucks paved the road to 40,000 branded coffee shops. The company opened its first store in 1971. Growth was slow at first. Starbucks had only 165 stores when it went public in 1992. Even with over 16,000 stores in America, same-store sales rose 8% in the most recent quarter, a sign that there is enough demand for Starbucks to grow in its home market.

Another reason for the industry to be optimistic about sales prospects is customers’ time in coffee shops. According to the World Coffee Portal, over the past 12 months, 46% of people who went to a location stayed up to 30 minutes.

Finally, if coffee chains can drag drinkers out of their homes, sales could rise more rapidly. Nearly 80% of Americans drink at least one cup of coffee at home.

This post was updated on July 5, 2025 to include information on Luckin Coffee’s U.S. arrival.

About the Author Douglas A. McIntyre →

Douglas A. McIntyre is the co-founder, chief executive officer and editor in chief of 24/7 Wall St. and 24/7 Tempo. He has held these jobs since 2006.

McIntyre has written thousands of articles for 24/7 Wall St. He is an expert on corporate finance, the automotive industry, media companies and international finance. He has edited articles on national demographics, sports, personal income and travel.

His work has been quoted or mentioned in The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, Los Angeles Times, The Washington Post, NBC News, Time, The New Yorker, HuffPost USA Today, Business Insider, Yahoo, AOL, MarketWatch, The Atlantic, Bloomberg, New York Post, Chicago Tribune, Forbes, The Guardian and many other major publications. McIntyre has been a guest on CNBC, the BBC and television and radio stations across the country.

A magna cum laude graduate of Harvard College, McIntyre also was president of The Harvard Advocate. Founded in 1866, the Advocate is the oldest college publication in the United States.

TheStreet.com, Comps.com and Edgar Online are some of the public companies for which McIntyre served on the board of directors. He was a Vicinity Corporation board member when the company was sold to Microsoft in 2002. He served on the audit committees of some of these companies.

McIntyre has been the CEO of FutureSource, a provider of trading terminals and news to commodities and futures traders. He was president of Switchboard, the online phone directory company. He served as chairman and CEO of On2 Technologies, the video compression company that provided video compression software for Adobe’s Flash. Google bought On2 in 2009.