How many Starbucks does Fresno need? We’re choking on mediocre corporate coffee | Opinion
Answer: China and Fresno.
Question: What are Starbucks’ two most important growth markets?
Yes, that’s an exaggeration and more than a slight one. Starbucks has 6,100 locations in China and plans to expand to 9,000 stores by the end of 2025. To meet that goal, according to a company press release, a new Starbucks must open in China every nine hours for three years.
You read correctly: a new Starbucks every nine hours for three years. It sounds completely nuts. Then again, China is a country of 1.4 billion people. That’s a lot of lattes.
Fresno, by contrast, is a city of 545,000. Although it may seem like there are 6,100 Starbucks in town, the actual number … drumroll please … is 38. With at least seven more in the works, according to our own Bethany Clough’s dogged retail reporting.
Opinion
Of the 38 Starbucks currently open in Fresno — a number I came up with by counting (and recounting) from the company’s online store locator — 28 are standalone locations and 10 are inside other stores ( i.e. Target and Vons), the airport and the Fresno State student union.
Divide 545,000 people by 38 stores, and you get one Starbucks for every 14,321 Fresno residents. After the seven planned new locations open, it’ll be one for every 12,111.
When that happens, Fresno will be more in line with California’s statewide average: one Starbucks for every 12,861 people.
Guess what city is even more Starbucks-congested than Fresno? Clovis, which has 12 locations (including three standalones) to serve a population of 125,000. That equates to one for every 10,416 residents.
Not sure what conclusions can be drawn from those figures, besides the obvious one that people in Fresno and Clovis sure enjoy mediocre corporate coffee.
I’d argue we aren’t given any other choice. Some developer decides that Starbucks is a safe bet for a strip mall or some unused corner lot and proceeds to shove carbon copy after carbon copy down our collective throats.
Free enterprise at its most bitter (tasting).
Starbucks likes Shaw, Herndon
Looking at the distribution of Starbucks throughout Fresno and Clovis, a few things stand out. One is how far north they are. Of the 50 locations in the metro area, 14 are located along the Shaw Avenue corridor, 12 along Herndon Avenue and seven north of Herndon. That’s 66%.
That leaves 17 remaining Starbucks, four of which are located along Ashlan Avenue and 13 further south. Downtown Fresno already has three Starbucks (if you include the one on Tulare Avenue just east of Highway 41), but apparently there’s room for one more.
Starbucks has applied for a conditional use permit to erect a new location on Tulare Avenue near R Street within 0.3 miles from the one at Divisadero and U and 0.4 miles from the one at Kern and N streets. Both are expected to remain open.
The proposed Starbucks, to be built on the site of the demolished El Torito, includes a two-lane drive-thru with enough space for 17 cars. Seventeen!
What do the seven still-in-the-pipeline Starbucks have in common? They each will be built with drive-thrus. Good thing Fresno is noted for its pristine air quality. What harm can a few hundred more idling cars possibly do? Give us convenience over a healthy set of lungs.
I don’t view every new Starbucks in a negative light. For example, the one going up at Martin Luther King Boulevard and Church Avenue near the new Fresno City College campus in a part of town typically ignored by corporate chains.
With 50 locations between Fresno and Clovis, Starbucks is already the area’s most prolific food and beverage chain. That’s compared to 31 Subways, 26 McDonald’s and 25 Taco Bells. (If you want to include convenience stores, there are 29 7-Eleven stores; only six are north of Shaw.)
Those 50 Starbucks provide lots of jobs, and there are dozens of local barista openings posted at indeed.com. Each starts at $16 per hour, which is 50 cents higher than California’s minimum wage. None of the local stores are unionized, so far as I can tell.
While there are many locally owned coffee shops around, you kind of have to hunt for them. All the prime locations along the busiest roads are taken by a certain ubiquitous chain.
We’re choking on Starbucks.
