Even a carefully executed business plan won’t bypass the biggest stumbling block in Starbucks’ attempt for Down Under domination: Australia’s cafe culture is just too damn good.

Thanks to waves of Italian and Greek immigrants in the early 1950s, Australia adopted the art of espresso-drinking-as-a-social-lubricant much earlier than the United States. While Starbucks introduced Americans to a European Lite version of coffee shop culture, in Australia it was a latecomer to a party no one invited it to.

“Starbucks was revolutionary in the US because the market is more accustomed to drip coffee,” explains Tuli Keidar, head roaster at Sydney’s Mecca Espresso. “Australia already had a well established cafe culture based on espresso when Starbucks arrived. It had to compete with cafes that provided a similar product of equal or better quality.”

There are over 10,000 cafes in Australia. No square of urban real estate lasts for long without being decked out with an espresso machine and ironic seating area fashioned from milk crates and hessian cushions. I once had a soy latte in a former crack den.