Starbucks Presses into the Fat Food Business

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By Douglas A. McIntyre Published
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Starbucks Corp. (NASDAQ: SBUX) has been extraordinarily successful recently, and that is reflected in the firm’s share price, which has risen more than 20% in the past year. CEO and founder Howard Schultz is so sure of the company’s bright future that he recently announced the coffee firm would add about 1,500 new “cafes” in the United States over the next five years. The company’s success is not only due to its move into instant coffee, the launch of its own Verismo coffee machine and the free WiFi it offers in its stores. Starbucks has pressed into the fatty, high-calorie food business. Some of its drinks and meals contain enough calories to match those sold by other fast-food companies, such as McDonald’s Corp. (NYSE: MCD). Americans love high-calorie and fatty food, and Starbucks has been smart enough to deliver.

Starbucks publishes it menu, both online and in stores, with data about calories, total fat and sodium. There is no way to completely match Starbucks food and drink calories directly with McDonald’s because the larger chain has a more extensive menu. But a few comparisons show that Starbucks sells plenty of calorie-rich food and drinks.

The Starbucks Hot Chocolate Venti, which is the largest size in which the drink comes, has 460 calories, which compares to a McDonald’s vanilla milkshake, which has 530. The Starbucks Caffee Mocha Venti has 410 calories, compared to the McDonald’s large McCafé Peppermint Mocha, which has 380.

Starbucks’ food is also as calorie rich as McDonald’s in many cases. A Blueberry Scone bar has 460 calories. An Egg McMuffin has 300. A Starbucks Sausage & Cheddar sandwich has 500 calories. A Big Mac has 520. In a comparison of chicken sandwiches, Starbucks Chicken Santa Fe has 400 calories, while the McDonald’s Chicken Sandwich has 420.

McDonald’s is often criticized for the huge number of calories in its offerings. Starbucks should be as well. It is not terribly hard to get a meal at Starbucks that has close to 1,000 calories.

Douglas A. McIntyre

Photo of Douglas A. McIntyre
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.

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