“Despite the COVID headwinds, we remain on track to operate 6,000 stores by the end of this year.”

In context

“the last piece of that is the competitive advantage that we have is that the modifiers that our customers are adding to cold is a greater number than they add to hot. The modifiers are raising the ticket and the modifiers produce color and excitement to the Gen Z audience and they immediately put it on social media. But we're in the early stages of the cold beverage platform in terms of what we're going to bring in terms of innovation and the modifiers and the customization gives us a significant competitive advantage. You layer all of that on what I said earlier, and that is the morning day part coming back with velocity. And I think all bets are off in terms of the operating leverage that we're going to get in here. Rachel Ruggeri: I'll answer the second part of the question. Thank you. Despite the COVID headwinds, we remain on track to operate 6,000 stores by the end of this year. We added 107 net new stores in Q3 with our new stores continuing to deliver great returns and profitability. The fact that we could still open more than one store per day in Q3 speak volume to our team's capabilities, our resilience and a strong operating muscle we have built. We remain highly confident in the resilience and dynamism of the Chinese consumer economy. China's coffee market is still in its very early stages, and we have a long runway for growth ahead. Store development will continue to fuel the growth for Starbucks China and we'll continue to expand our retail footprint in a strategic and disciplined way. We're going to continue to go wide, enter into more new cities. We're going to continue to go deep in filling with more innovative formats to deliver the perfect and most r”