With 33,833 locations in and outside the United States, Starbucks is the world's largest coffeehouse chain. With a Tokyo branch inaugurated in 1996, Starbucks began exploring non-American territories with its latest operation in Iraq. Baghdad, the piracy-ridden country's capital, houses not one but three Starbucks cafes, each boasting the green-and-white logo on the buildings and coffee-related paraphernalia from the cups to the napkins.
...and all of its fake.
No, the Iraqi Starbucks doesn't carry the names of its notorious predecessors like "Dumb Starbucks", "Stars Coffee", or "Sunbucks". The branding is very much true, thanks to the real Starbucks merchandise that is imported from Iraq's neighbours. But everything else is fake because the Baghdad Starbucks is unlicensed.
As Associated Press reports, the American multinational obviously filed a lawsuit but the trademark violation is currently on pause because the Baghdadi owner has allegedly threatened Starbucks' lawyers, citing his contacts with influential "Iranian armed groups" and "Iraqi political parties".
To quote Amin Makhushi from an AP interview in September,
"I am a businessman. I had this ambition to open Starbucks in Iraq. I decided to do it anyway, and bear the consequences.”
Even though Makhushi sold off the coffee shops in October, the Iraqi Starbucks are still functioning. With Iraq seething with similar cases of infringement of Intellectual Property (IP), Starbucks continues its fight to shut down all Starbucks branches in the Gulf nation.
Of course, this isn't the first time that Starbucks has witnessed an operational knock-off.
The Chinese Starbucks Universe: China's numerous counterfeit brands make for common marketing knowledge and Starbucks is no exception to the rule. From Sunbucks to Starlucks to even USA Bucks, tourists and memers have captured several instances when the Chinese have parodied the brand name or logo for opening their own cafes. Other popular examples include Starbrucks, Starbox, and the most obvious pun: Starf***s!
The Russia-Ukraine War created Stars Coffee: The general consensus on the Internet favours "Tsar Bucks" as the obvious name for a fake Starbucks in Russia. Unfortunately, the country decided to go with a more decent name like Stars Coffee.
Early this year, Starbucks was one of the several American companies to exit the Russian market following Putin's invasion of Ukraine. In truly "Make in Russia" fashion, Moscow debuted a Stars Coffee outlet in August. With new branches opening up eventually, the Stars Coffee chain of roasteries is owned by Russian restauranteur Anton Pinskiy, who claims that barring the logo, the Russian coffee chain bears no similarities with its American counterpart. Instead of the Starbucks siren, Star Coffee's circular logo features a long-haired woman. The resemblance with the siren is still not lost on anyone.
With all 130 Starbucks branches ceasing operations in Russia this year, the Seattle-based company is yet to engage in a legal battle with the Russian Stars.
Pakistan's very own Sattar Buksh: While Starbucks hasn't dared to open shop at Pakistan yet, two entrepreneurs Rizwan Ahmad and Adnan Yousuf began Karachi's Sattar Buksh as a joke in 2013.
Since then, the coffee shop opened another branch in Islamabad and has actually been quite popular among the locals and tourists. The siren in the logo is now replaced with the titular Sattar Buksh, a moustached man who is equated with a "know-it-all" from the neighbourhood. The obsession with the moustache can be seen even in the establishment's Instagram bio that reads,
"Sattar Buksh Cafe; World famous in Pakistan. Moonch ki kassam (promise of the moustache)!"
Despite their Instagram being silent for more than four years now, TripAdvisor and Google Reviews state that the cafe is still functional. Yet again, it must be noted that the no reviews beyond 2019 have been posted online. And even when DailyO tried to reach Sattar Buksh's number, the calls went unresponsive. So, the current fate of Sattar Buksh still remains uncertain.
While it was the gimmicky name that was the main attraction (majority of the TripAdvisor reviews cite bad food and slow service), Sattar Buksh apparently also provided hookahs along with the usual coffee and snacks!
When Comedy Central sponsored a "Dumb Starbucks" in LA: Nathan Fielder is arguably a master of absurdist comedy, with his shows blurring the lines between reality shows and social experiments. In his parody series Nathan For You, Fielder plays an exaggerated version of himself offering the most offbeat business solutions to struggling companies. A show like this came with its own fair share of outlandish publicity stunts such as opening a fake Starbucks in Los Angeles.
Under the name "Dumb Starbucks", the coffee shop opened on February 7, 2014 with all its products prefixed with the word "Dumb". It is quite common for American Starbucks chains to sell music CDs along with beverages. Similarly, Dumb Starbucks had its own music catalogue with greatest hits like "Dumb Jazz" and "Dumb Norah Jones duets". While the store called itself an "art gallery for legal reasons", onlookers were bewildered with some thinking this is a social experiment by street artist Bansky.
Eventually, the Health Department intervened and alleged the shop to be operating without the required permits following which Nathan For You's network Comedy Central came clean with the joke.
India's SardarBuksh had to change its name to Sardarji Bakhsh: Starting from a small coffee cart in Rajouri Garden, Delhi, in 2015 by childhood friends Sanmeet Singh Kalra and Rohit Kamboj, SardarBuksh soon emerged as one of the most popular coffee chains of Delhi, especially in the Western region of the national capital.
However, by 2018, the Seattle lawyers got a whiff of SardarBuksh's brew. Within two months, the Delhi-based chain renamed itself it to Sardarji Bakhsh. The name was yet again not too different and fortunately, the logo was left unchanged.
Unlike other companies that resort to wordplay on the Starbucks name, Sardarji Bakhsh has always had a logo that departs from the usual shades of green and white. Instead, the brand is characterised by a black-and-white logo that includes a bearded man in a pagdi (turban).
According to their official website, Sardarji Bakhsh brews arabica coffee in 14 outlets across not just Delhi but also Noida, Gurgaon, Lucknow and Chandigarh now.
Have you ever been to a fake Starbucks?