Starbucks said Tuesday it plans to have about 9,000 stores in China by 2025—meaning the coffee chain would have to open one new store every nine hours for the next three years.
This year’s goal is 6,000 new stores.
The announcement comes as Shanghai emerges from a weeks-long lockdown. The financial hub is home to the most Starbucks stores of any city in the world. During the peak of its lockdown, around 900 Starbucks stores temporarily closed their doors.
Starbucks opened its first China store in Beijing in early 1999, and grew rapidly in the Chinese market. In just ten years, China became the number two country globally for Starbucks locations, second only to the United States.