Fiscal 2007 will be a big year for Starbucks. It will finally give New Yorkers warm breakfast sandwiches. It will move closer to making China its biggest market outside the U.S. It will take down a chain of hippie baristas.

And, if reports by director of trading and operations Colman Cuff are to be believed, it will open 20% more stores than it has today; a whopping 2,400. While many of these will be in the U.S., a large number will be in China, where Starbucks Corporation (NASDAQ:SBUX) currently has only 400 stores.

Everyone seems to believe one eternal axiom of investing: growth is good. Certainly, revenue and profit growth will be good for Starbucks and I (as an exceedingly small investor), for one, can't complain about the short-term growth of the stock -- up 65 cents, or 1.76%, today on the news. And growth surely seems built into the price, at an exceedingly rich 53x earnings.

But growth can be too fast. Too careless. Too extravagant. Too 20%. In my analysis of the company's cash flows, it's somewhere between $250k and $300k to open a new Starbucks. Maybe that's not outrageous? But it's not cheap. When I see these huge numbers all stacking up together, I want to be very worried.