The Starbucks index

After a meeting in Shanghai today, we had a couple of hours to spare, before the plane took us back to Fuzhou. We ended up in a bar to meet up with Jon, an acquaintance of my colleague, and a couple of his co-workers. We had an interesting discussion about the differences between cities in China. Jon was wondering how we could stand living in a city like Fuzhou. He knew the city from many years ago and was not very impressed by it, to say the least. After explaining the fast development Fuzhou has gone through during the past few years, the question was "...but does Fuzhou already have a Starbucks?". And with that, he made an interesting point.

Fuzhou does not have a Starbucks yes, indeed. There is an "SPC Coffee" and we have the "King Buck", but no real Starbucks. Supposedly, Starbucks or some of its franchisers have checked the situation in Fuzhou but found the city not ripe for the famous coffee chain yet.

In Europe I wouldn’t directly link the presence of Starbucks in a city to the level of development, but in China there really seems to be a correlation; the Starbucks index.