Since opening its first non-North American international branch in Tokyo 25 years ago, Starbucks has come to dominate the coffee scene in 80 countries. Incredibly, Starbucks is now the second largest fast-food chain in the world after McDonald’s, featuring over 32,000 international locations.
SavingSpot (a subsidiary of CashNetUSA) offers The Manual readers findings from an analysis of delivery apps that reveal the cost of a tall latte in every country where Starbucks exists. From the world’s most expensive to the world’s most affordable java, let’s dig in to compare Starbucks latte drinks.
Whether you’re in a rare African Starbucks or one of the 600 new Chinese stores that Starbucks plans to open this year, coffee customers are typically going to find the same Starbucks menu with cultural flavor and local sourcing mixed in. Coffee, for example, is the go-to caffeine cocktail for U.S. citizens. Canada, the UK, and China, however, are tea-based nations and therefore offer a larger variety of tea-based drinks. And while you can still find a tall latte if you’re in India, there’s going to be variation in cost. Starbucks menu prices will be affected by GDP, operating costs, government regulations, and more. Seeing as these are going to differ dramatically from country to country (even U.S. state to state), CashNet’s delivery app trawl is an excellent comparative tool to see how the cost of a tall latte compares across the planet.
Where is the world’s most expensive Starbucks latte?
The world’s most expensive tall latte that research uncovered? Switzerland where a tall latte averages $7.17. The Swiss also have access to what CashNet found to be the world’s most expensive Starbucks item of all, a $9.31 Iced Caramel Macchiato. With a long-established cafe culture in Europe, citizens tend to have higher expectations of their morning joe, and Starbucks prices reflect that.
In Western Europe, a tall latte is typically more than $4. In comparison, the U.S. averages about $3.26 for a Starbucks tall latte. SavingSpot found Scandinavia to be particularly pricy with Finland and Norway each averaging over $5 for a tall latte. In Denmark, you’ll have to shell out an incredible $6.55 for black gold.
Where is the world’s least expensive Starbucks latte?
On the other side of the scale, the cheapest place in the world to buy a tall latte is in Turkey. The crossroads of Europe and Asia, Turkey offers the planet’s least expensive Starbucks tall latte at $1.31. CashNet found over 500 stores in Turkey — the most Starbucks branches in the region, which makes sense for the ancient nation that features its own caffeinated drink, traditional Turkish coffee.
Statista found that Turkey contains the second most stores in Europe following Britain, which had almost 750 Starbucks franchises as of 2021. The research group found that coming in second to the 15,000 U.S.-associated stores, there were over 5,300 locales now in China, which towers over the third country on the list, Japan, with over 1,500 Starbucks locations. That hasn’t eased prices for a tall latte, however. The drink costs an average of $4.23 in China, second most on the continent behind (predictably) the uber-expensive Macau-Hong Kong region where a latte is going to run you about $5.52 per cup.
Income matters, too
Southeast Asia is the region that SavingSpot found a tall Starbucks latte to be the most cost-deterrent to citizens. In Vietnam, the coffee drink costs almost 60% of citizens’ daily median income. In Cambodia, that number rises to over 85%. This is unfortunately true in the coffee-growing hotspots of El Salvador and Indonesia where many of the people responsible for bringing beans to wealthier nations can’t afford a cup of their own joe.
On the opposite end of this spectrum, the U.S. comes in as the most affordable country for Starbucks compared to daily median income, followed by Norway and Austria. (That’s good news for our wallets at least.)
