The US Airport With The Most Starbucks Locations Isn't On The West Coast

Starbucks is among the biggest restaurant chains in the entire world, despite the coffee chain closing over 100 stores in 2025. While you can point to a plethora of different reasons why Starbucks has become such a successful business, one reason is undoubtedly its remarkable accessibility, making it difficult (but not impossible) to avoid Starbucks. With over 16,000 locations, the coffee chain is quite literally everywhere, including airports. While there are many airports with several Starbucks locations within them, O'Hare International Airport in Chicago, Illinois, houses 14 different Starbucks — the most of any airport in the United States, according to Upgraded Points.

Although O'Hare International Airport is not the biggest U.S. airport, it is the seventh largest and the fifth busiest in terms of travelers each year, per the Federal Aviation Administration. For this reason, it might still prove difficult to visit one of the Starbucks inside O'Hare and not be met with a line of customers. Plus, considering that the 14 Starbucks locations are among over 200 other restaurants, food stations, and vending areas at Chicago's premier airport, the coffee chain's presence doesn't feel as overstated as one may expect.

One thing that often shocks travelers looking to grab a coffee from a Starbucks inside an airport like O'Hare is how different some of the details of the shops are compared to standalone locations. The most notable example of this is the prices. As is the case at many airport restaurants and cafes, food is much more expensive in these Starbucks locations due to higher rent prices, which are highly dependent on a vendor's Minimum Annual Guarantee (MAG). A restaurant's MAG is a base amount of its yearly profits that it is obligated to pay to the airport for allowing the vendor to do business within it. For a chain as in-demand as Starbucks — and with prices that many know by heart — these fees' impact on the menu is often very noticeable. Furthermore, because airport Starbucks locations are operated by HMSHost — a company that licenses chain restaurants specifically for use in transportation hubs — some policies, promotions, and limited-time items may differ from those owned and operated by Starbucks itself.

Beyond that, some say that airport Starbucks locations, like the several you can find at O'Hare Airport, even differ from one another quite drastically depending on where in the airport they are located. Some workers say that the Starbucks shops that are located after the airport's security checkpoint are much busier than those before it due to the fact that many flyers arrive at their gates earlier to get food or drinks. With this in mind, these post-security locations are also much more susceptible to delay-related chaos that airports are known for.