Coming Attractions

And with what do customers want to wash all this chow down? Need you ask? We found that once again, coffee is the prime beverage choice everywhere from doughnut stores and smoothie chains to specialty coffee bars. But lest you despair, we've found there's still room in the industry alongside the ubiquitous Starbucks chain. Franchises like Gloria Jean's, The Second Cup and The Coffee Beanery are still pouring strong brews for anti-Starbucks denizens (think: big, corporate monolith, bad; small, neighborhood coffee bar, good) and those rare few who don't have a Starbucks nearby. "Since Starbucks isn't franchising, it's not into the saturation that a franchise company might be engaged in because Starbucks is limited by the capital it has available," says Boroian. "So what's happening is, these smaller chains are starting to open competing units to fill the gaps between the Starbucks locations, and they're undercutting their prices."

Two other trends we predict you'll want to watch for: caffeine-lovers who proudly flaunt their Dunkin' Donuts coffee cups while thumbing their noses at $3 lattes, and juice bars, whose number of franchised units exploded by almost 60 percent this year.

This article was originally published in the January 1999 print edition of Entrepreneur with the headline: Coming Attractions.