Starbucks

Starbucks Corporation runs company stores and licenses the brand into grocery, airports, and campuses. Packaged coffee and ready-to-drink bottles go through grocery distributors, a different market from the cafe.

Airport and campus concessions are won as exclusive or limited-slot contracts. Once Starbucks holds the slot, another cafe does not. Those are vertical exclusives granted by the airport authority, and they are why a terminal can have three Starbucks and no independent.

Urban store density raises rivals' costs for locations and for barista labor. Predatory-pricing claims against cafes almost never succeed because coffee retail is easy to enter on a single corner and hard to monopolize nationally. Local exclusives are the sharper issue.

The company buys a large share of high-grade arabica through long contracts. That is buyer power in the coffee trade, felt by exporters more than by the person in line.

Exclusive concession contracts allocate captive locations such as airports.

Licensed grocery cafes can be tied to shelf space for bottled drinks.

National share overstates power; local concession monopolies understate it.

Green-coffee buying is a monopsony-style fact in the specialty trade.

Travelers pay concession prices because the lease excluded the alternative.

An independent roaster can still open on a city street and still cannot open inside the secured terminal.