Just to follow up on that: I'm sure we agree that Starbucks metagame is about selling more than just beverages. It's about selling a middle-class aspiration --

Just to follow up on that: I'm sure we agree that Starbucks metagame is about selling more than just beverages. It's about selling a middle-class aspiration -- using concepts like a "third place", "Italy", etc. This is why Starbucks is a $24b revenue company and Dunkin is a $1.4b revenue company. Luigi Zingales, an economist at UChicago, once said, "the fact that Starbucks is not Italian is hurtful. The extreme agency problems of Italy make it difficult to scale firms.".