On a trip to India during Diwali last autumn, Starbucks International CEO Brady Brewer tried a saffron tiramisu, as well as a spicy sandwich with chicken tikka at one of the American coffee-store giant’s local stores.
“That saffron tiramisu I had in India? I thought, ‘Why aren’t we offering this everywhere in the world? It’s beautiful and it tastes amazing,'” Brewer marveled in an interview with Fortune ahead of Starbucks’ investor day in New York on Thursday.
In the Netherlands, it’s the stroopwafel that gives Starbucks stores some couleur locale, while in Japan, the macha tea loaf does the trick. “Local cultures expect their food to be local and something familiar,” said Brewer. “But for coffee, they expect it to be our global product.”
Continuing to strike that balance will be central to Starbucks’ long-term goal of ultimately doubling its presence outside North America to some 40,000 stores. While most eyes are on Starbucks’ U.S. business, which last quarter finally returned to growth on a comparable sales basis after two years, the international division is a nearly $8 billion-a-year business that is growing more quickly, rising 10% in the most recent quarter. (The international division is about 21% of Starbucks’ total business.)
“This global scale and reach make Starbucks the clear market‑share leader in a growing away‑from‑home coffee category and the most widely accessed premium coffee brand in the world,” CEO Brian Niccol told Wall Street analysts at the investor day.
Brewer, who has been at Starbucks since 2001 and served as its international head since 2024 after a stint as marketing chief, thinks perhaps half of these 20,000 additional locations would be in China, where Starbucks struck a deal last fall with local partner Boyu to oversee its expansion after some stumbles. The China business is now booming again.
The bulk of Starbucks’ expansion abroad will be in markets where it already has a presence and is growing such as Britain and Mexico. Internationally, Starbucks has not confronted the same challenges as it has in the U.S. One big mistake for instance in recent years stateside was to reduce the seating in many cafés—partly to eliminate loitering concerns in cities, and in favor of mobile and drive-through formats. But this undermined the chain’s ability to be a “third place” for customers, other than work or home, which it has long touted as a reason to visit Starbucks.
Meanwhile, Brewer ascribes Starbucks’ success in Italy, where even the average person is a coffee connoisseur, to offering people, especially young people, a place to relax and enjoy a coffee. “We’re not trying to change the Italian coffee culture, but we can add to it with a great ‘third place’ experience,” said Brewer.
That respect for local markets is key for Starbucks, a quintessentially American brand, at a time of friction between the U.S. government and many countries. In its annual report in November, the company noted “rising anti-American sentiment in certain markets” as a risk factor.
But Brewer says Starbucks has transcended its roots. “We graduated beyond just being a U.S. brand quite some time ago to becoming a global one,” he said. He points to using coffee harvested in Indonesia or Brazil in those markets.
And that brings us to the saffron tiramisu. “It’s a celebration of the local culture within the context of a global company,” he says, “and that balance has served us well, and makes the brand resilient.”
