Until I moved to Houston, I never quite “got” all the jokes about Starbucks taking over the world. That’s because there was and is no Starbucks in my hometown. Doing a little research just now (hey, I’m bored) I found that the only Starbucks in all of Brazoria County, Texas is in Pearland, on the extreme north side by Houston.
So, the Brazosport area, which has a population of ~72,000 and includes nine cities, has no easy access to a Starbucks. The largest city in the area is my hometown, Lake Jackson, which has a population of ~26,000.
Heh. I used to live in Bay City when I worked at STP in 1988.
I have used Starbucks store locator to find them on trips. I noticed that (at least a year. It’s hard to find a Starbucks on the road to Arkansas, believe me.
Roanoke, VA didn’t have one for the longest time. I checked Starbucks site, and now they have ONE. There’s over a hundred thousand people in Roanoke’s “metropolitan area”.
In Oklahoma, they exist only in OKC, Tulsa, Norman, and Edmond (22 stores total). That leaves out some pretty fair-sized towns like Lawton (Fort Sill), Bartlesville, and Enid (Vance AFB). All are over 30,000 people; Lawton has 93,000 and is over 100 miles from Oklahoma City. Hell, New Mexico has more locations than we do.
There are no retail Starbucks stores in the Upper Peninsula of Michigan - population of about 200K, and pretty damn big. I live in the largest town, about 22K people.
To be totally honest, though, as of last year, there is a Starbucks hidden deep within the local university. It’s not a “real” Starbucks in the sense it’s owned & operated by the University. I’m not sure if it counts or not, as it doesn’t show up on the Starbucks Website when you do a search for stores, and unless you’re a student or work at the university, you’d never know it’s there. It’s in the basement of the library building, not someplace where you can easily stop in for a quick fix.
Well, how do you define a Starbucks? My former hometown has a coffee shop that sells Starbucks brand coffee, but isn’t actually a full-scale Starbucks operation nor is it actually called Starbucks. It’s probably about 30,000 or so people now (28,000+ in the 2000 census).
Your question got me to thinking about small and mid-size metro areas that I’ve traveled through in the Deep South. Starbucks was slow to move into these type of places and has just made a real push into these areas in the past few years. I am basing my criteria on free-standing Starbucks stores, not those places in bookstores etc. that sell their brand of coffee. Based on this criteria, I submit the following for your poll:
Valdosta, GA: Approx 100,000 in metro area
Dothan, Alabama: Approx. 120,000 in metro area
Columbus, GA: Approx. 200,000 in metro area
Biloxi-Gulfport, MS: Approx 320,000 in metro area
Macon, GA: Approx 200,000 in metro area looks to be getting their first one soon.
So it looks like Biloxi/Gulfport with a three county metro area of well over 300,000 is the biggest area I could find without a Starbucks. They would have to drive to New Orleans, Hattiesburg or Mobile to find their nearest Starbucks. This would be at the closest about a 40 to 50 mile drive.
If you live in or near one of these areas and have some personal knowledge of these examples NOT being true, please let us know. I am basing my info. on Starbucks website only.
Fayetteville, AR has one, sort of, in a Barnes and Noble. Other than that, the whole Fayetteville-Springdale-Rogers metro, which I think is the 6th fastest growing metro area in the country, and had 311,121 people on the 2000 census, doesn’t have one. Bentonville, however, does.
There are very few Starbucks in all of Iowa.
Ames (pop ~50,000) doesn’t have any, though you can buy the coffee at the grocery store;
Des Moines (~200,000) apparently has one Starbucks downtown, as does Iowa City (~62,000).
According to the Starbucks website, there are 22 Starbucks ‘retail stores’ in Iowa, but 12 of those are in a grocery store or a Target.
Hey chaoticdonkey based on census info., Bentonville is part of the NW Ark. metro area, so technically there still is one Starbucks in the metro area even if it’s largest city doesn’t have one. I can’t believe there isn’t one on campus or near campus at U of A.
Biloxi/Gulfport is bigger with a metro population of 343,423 and absolutely NO free standing Starbucks, so thus far it’s still the biggest metro without ANY Starbucks.
There’s nothing like being in a stripmall (not a real mall - just a line of stores), and having not one, but two Starbucks (one on either side of the strip).
Or those times where you have at least 3 Starbucks in line of sight.
Or knowing that if you don’t feel like leaving your car, there’s a Starbucks drive through, just a mile or so away.
I thought for sure that Newark, Camden, and Jersey City NJ would be Starbuckless, but they each have one (not counting the ones in Newark Airport). The Camden one is in the Rutgers student union, but still.
There are none in East St. Louis (population just 30,000, though), and apparently none within 50 miles of Carbondale, Illinois. And here is where I reach the limit of my boredom, sadly.
Yes, according to this U.S. Census info: 2004 Metro Areas the metro area consists of Benton, Madison, Washington counties in AR and MacDonald county in MO. Bentonville is in Benton County.
