STARBUCKS CORPORATION Synopsis: According to the Official
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STARBUCKS CORPORATION Synopsis: According to the official website of Starbucks, every day, they go to work hoping to do two things: share great coffee with their friends and help make the world a little better. And It was first established and opened in March 30, 1971 by three partners who met while they were students at the University of San Francisco. English teacher Jerry Baldwin, history teacher Zev Siegl, and writer Gordon Bowker. The three were inspired to sell high-quality coffee beans and equipment by coffee roasting entrepreneur Alfred Peet after he taught them his style of roasting beans. Originally the company was to be called Pequod but was rejected by some of the co- founders. The business was instead named after the chief mate on the Pequod, Starbuck. Before, the enterprise was a single store in 2000 Western Avenue Seattle’s historic Pike Place Market, Washington 1971–1976. From just a narrow storefront, it offered some of the world’s finest fresh-roasted whole bean coffees. This cafe was later moved to 1912 Pike Place Market; never to be relocated again. During this time, the company only sold roasted whole coffee beans and did not yet brew coffee to sell.The only brewed coffee served in the store were free samples. During their first year of operation, they purchased green coffee beans from Peet's, then began buying directly from growers. Moby Dick inspired the name after a whaling ship , evoked the romance of the high seas and the seafaring tradition of the early coffee traders. In 1981, Howard Schultz (Starbucks chairman, president and chief executive officer) had first walked into a Starbucks store. From his first cup of Sumatra, Howard was drawn into Starbucks and joined a year later. Two years later, Howard traveled to Italy and became captivated with Italian coffee bars and the romance of the coffee experience. He had a vision to bring the Italian coffeehouse tradition back to the United States. A place for conversation and a sense of community. A third place between work and home. He left Starbucks for a short period of time to start his own Il Giornale coffeehouses and returned in August 1987 to purchase Starbucks with the help of local investors. At the start, Starbucks set out to be a different kind of company. One that not only celebrated coffee and the rich tradition, but that also brought a feeling of connection. Their mission is to inspire and nurture the human spirit – one person, one cup, and one neighborhood at a time. Today, with more than 21,000 stores in 65 countries, It is the premier roaster and retailer of specialty coffee in the world. And with every cup, they strive to bring both heritage and an exceptional experience to life. Company History: Starbucks Corporation is the leading roaster, retailer, and marketer of specialty coffee in North America. Its operations include upwards of 2,400 coffee shops and kiosks in the United States and Canada, more than 100 in the United Kingdom, and more than 200 in other countries, including China, Japan, Kuwait, Lebanon, New Zealand, Malaysia, the Philippines, Singapore, South Korea, Taiwan, and Thailand. In addition to a variety of coffees and coffee drinks, Starbucks shops also feature Tazo teas; pastries and other food items; and espresso machines, coffee brewers, and other assorted items. The company also sells many of these products via mail order and online at starbucks.com. It also wholesales its coffee to restaurants, businesses, education and healthcare institutions, hotels, and airlines. Through a joint venture with Pepsi- Cola Company, Starbucks bottles Frappuccino beverages and sells them through supermarkets and convenience and drugstores. Through a partnership with Kraft Foods, Inc., the company sells Starbucks whole bean and ground coffee into grocery, warehouse club, and mass merchandise stores. A third joint venture is with Dreyer's Grand Ice Cream. In addition, it distributes Starbucks premium coffee ice creams to U.S. supermarkets. From a single small store that opened in 1971 to its status as a gourmet coffee giant at the turn of the millennium, Starbucks has led a coffee revolution in the United States and beyond. Roots in Coffee Retailing and Wholesaling Starbucks was founded in Seattle, Washington, a haven for coffee aficionados. The city was noted for its coffee before World War II, but the quality of its coffee had declined so much by the late 1960s that resident Gordon Bowker made pilgrimages to Vancouver, British Columbia, to buy his beans there. His point of reference for the beverage was dark, delicious coffee he had discovered in Italy. Soon Bowker, then a writer for Seattle magazine, was making runs for friends as well. When Seattle folded, two of Bowker's friends, Jerry Baldwin, an English teacher, and Zev Siegl, a history teacher, also happened to be seeking new ventures; the three banded together and literally built their first store--located in Seattle's Pike Place Market--by hand. They raised $1,350 apiece, borrowed another $5,000, picked the name Starbucks--for the punchy 'st' sound and its reference to the coffee-loving first mate in Moby Dick--then designed a two-tailed siren for a logo and set out to learn about coffee. Siegl went to Berkeley, California, to learn from a Dutchman, Alfred Peet, who ran Peet's Coffee, which had been a legend among local coffee drinkers since 1966. Peet's approach to coffee beans became the cornerstone for Starbucks' reputation: high-grade arabica beans, roasted to a dark extreme by a trained perfectionist roaster. Starbucks bought its coffee from Peet's for its first nine months, giving away cups of coffee to hook customers. The plan worked. By 1972 the three founders had opened a second store in University Village and invested in a Probat roaster. Baldwin became the young company's first roaster. Within its first decade, Starbucks had opened stores in Bellevue, Capitol Hill, and University Way. By 1982 the original entrepreneurs had a solid retail business of five stores, a small toasting facility, and a wholesale business that sold coffee primarily to local restaurants. The first of the company's growth versus ethos challenges came here: how does one maintain a near fanatical dedication to freshness in wholesale? Starbucks insisted that the shelf life of coffee is less than 14 days after roasting. As a result, they donated all eight-day-old coffee to charity. In 1982 Starbucks hired Howard Schultz to manage the company's retail sales and marketing. While vice-president of U.S. operations for Hammarplast, a Swedish housewares company, and working out of New York, Schultz met the Starbucks trio and considered their coffee a revelation. (He had grown up on instant.) He and his wife packed up and drove 3,000 miles west to Seattle to join Starbucks. There were other changes taking place at Starbucks at the same time. Siegl had decided to leave in 1980. The name of the wholesale division was changed to Caravali, out of fear of sullying the Starbucks name with less than absolute freshness. Blue Anchor, a line of whole-bean coffees being prepackaged for supermarkets, was relinquished. Starbucks learned two lessons from their brief time in business with supermarkets: first, supermarkets and their narrow profit margins were not the best outlet for a coffee roaster who refused to compromise on quality in order to lower prices, and second, Starbucks needed to sell directly to consumers who were educated enough to know why the coffee they were buying was superior. Mid-1980s: The Shift to Coffee Bars In 1983 Starbucks bought Peet's Coffee, which had by then become a five-store operation itself. That same year, Schultz took a buying trip to Italy, where another coffee revelation took place. Wandering the piazzas of Milan, Schultz was captivated by the culture of coffee and the romance of Italian coffee bars. Milan had about 1,700 espresso bars, which were a third center for Italians, after work and home. Schultz returned home determined to bring Italian coffee bars to the United States, but found his bosses reluctant, being still more dedicated to retailing coffee. As a result, Schultz left the company to write a business plan of his own. His parting with Starbucks was so amicable that the founders invested in Schultz's vision. Schultz returned to Italy to do research, visiting hundreds of espresso and coffee bars. In the spring of 1986, he opened his first coffee bar in the Columbia Seafirst Center, the tallest building west of Chicago. Faithful to its inspiration, the bar had a stately espresso machine as its centerpiece. Called Il Giornale, the bar served Starbucks coffee and was an instant hit. A second was soon opened in Seattle, and a third in Vancouver. Schultz hired Dave Olsen, the proprietor of one of the first bohemian espresso bars in Seattle, as a coffee consultant and employee trainer. A year later, Schultz was thriving while Starbucks was encountering frustration. The wholesale market had been reconfigured by the popularity of flavored coffees, which Starbucks resolutely refused to produce. The company's managers were also increasingly aggravated by the lack of wholesale quality control, so they sold their wholesale line, Caravali, to Seattle businessman Bart Wilson and a group of investors. In addition, Bowker was interested in leaving the company to concentrate on a new project, Red Hook Ale. Schultz approached his old colleagues with an attractive offer: how about $4 million for the six-unit Starbucks chain? They sold, with Olsen remaining as Starbucks' coffee buyer and roaster; the Starbucks stores were merged into Il Giornale.