I believe in such signals. Starbucks, to everyone, is discretionary spending: pricey, single-use consumables. In the US, the stores are someplace you can sit an

I believe in such signals. Starbucks, to everyone, is discretionary spending: pricey, single-use consumables. In the US, the stores are someplace you can sit and spend time, like a Panera, but plenty of people get their drinks to go. It'd be worth comparing drive-thru and take-out traffic with eat-in traffic at Starbucks to see if a particular category of orders is declining more. Discretionary spending on consumables is the first thing that most people cut back when they're trying to save money. People have a fixed amount of income, and they try to allocate that to necessities first. A reduction of spending in discretionary consumables may be an indicator that people perceive their cost of living to be rising.