Starbucks' ambitious drive towards global domination has provoked outrage among campaigners and admiration among investors.

But the near-ubiquitous coffee chain has shown the first sign that its seemingly unstoppable expansion is beginning to slow.

It announced late last night that it is to scale back its opening of new stores, as higher costs and weakening confidence among American consumers begins to bite.

In recent years, Starbucks has looked outside the US for new markets to feed its growth targets, particularly to China, where it famously opened an outlet in Beijing’s Forbidden City.

But it said in its results for the fourth quarter that the number of American caffeine addicts streaming through its doors had dropped by 1 per cent, the first decrease in customer traffic since since Starbucks started publishing figures three years ago. The US is still home to 71 per cent of Starbucks’ 15,000 stores.

The company denied that it had overdeveloped some markets, but said that it would open 100 fewer stores than originally forecast next year. Last year it set a new goal of 40,000 coffee stores worldwide, 10,000 more than its previous target.

It plans to open 2,500 stores in the US, 100 fewer than it expected, and 900 stores in international markets, including its first stores in Argentina and Portugal, next year.

The company opened 615 sites in the latest quarter and 2,571 in the financial year as a whole — the equivalent of seven a day.

Jim Donald, the chief executive, said that the slowdown would help the company choose the right markets. He said: “It gives us a little bit of breathing time to make sure that maybe we don’t need that other store in Columbus, Ohio, but maybe there’s one extra one in Vermont that we could put up.

But Starbucks’ detractors should not get ahead of themselves — inspite of the slight softening in the US market, the Seattle-based company saw fourth-quarter profit increase 35 per cent to $158.5 million (£77.3m).

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