Coffee Beanery

Who Are the Top Four Coffee Shop Retailers In The U.S.?

Starbucks, Tim Horton's, Coffee Bean and Tea Leaf and lastly Caribou Coffee are the top four retail coffee shop chains in the United States today. Perhaps you have enjoyed a coffee drink at one of these four coffee retailers within the past week! If not I would be very surprised. Of the four, the largest is obviously Starbucks with a total of over 8, 000 locations in the United States alone! Caribou Coffee has 322 U.S. locations. Both Tim Horton's and Coffee Bean and Tea Leaf have just under 300 locations each.

Starbucks is truly the big player in the retail coffee industry and even has Seattle's Best, which has 160 U.S. locations, as part of their corporate family of retail coffee shops not counted in the above 8, 000 number. Seattle's Best coffee shops are very similar to Starbucks but have a different color scheme and quite often are located in different neighborhoods than the many Starbucks locations. One has to wonder if it is not the very same coffee just packaged differently. Other significant coffee shop chains that didn't make it into the top four are Coffee Beanery, the already mentioned Seattle's Best, Port City Java, Tully's, Dunn Coffee, and Peet's Coffee - and the list could go on forever with the many regional coffee retailers that are popping up everywhere.

Almost 50 years ago, 1971 to be exact, is when Starbucks first started selling coffee to hungry coffee enthusiasts. When Starbucks first opened their doors they were but a mere single coffee shop selling some darn good coffee that was freshly roasted from whole coffee beans. The location of this first Starbucks coffee shop was Pike Place Market in Seattle, Washington. So, what is the corporate mission of Starbucks? Here it is: to inspire and nurture the human spirit, one person, one cup, and one neighborhood at a time. Nowadays, Starbucks has 15, 000 selling units in 50 countries all over the world. And if that was not enough, Starbucks also happens to be the world's leading coffee roaster as well as retailer of premium specialty coffee.

Caribou Coffee has grown to the point of having retail coffee shops spread out amongst 15 states, primarily in the mid-west and eastern parts of the country. Caribou Coffee is approximately 21 years old as they opened their doors for business in 1990. The folks at Caribou Coffee prefer not to talk about their mission as a corporation because they feel their true mission is to serve their loyal customers. The goal of the employees at Caribou Coffee is to create an extraordinary experience that feeds the soul each and every time a customer enters one of their retail coffee shops.