The Starbucks Story

Coffee is a commodity. You can get a cup at any café, sandwich bar or restaurant anywhere. So how did Starbucks manage to reinvent coffee as a whole new experience, and create a hugely successful brand in the process? The Starbucks Story tells the brand’s story from its origins in a Seattle fish market to its growing global presence today. This is a story that has unfolded quickly - at least in terms of conventional business development. Starbucks is a phenomenon. Unknown 15 years ago, it now ranks among the 100 most valuable brands in the world. It has become the quintessential brand of the modern age, built around the creation of an experience that can be consistently reproduced across the world. Originally published in 2004 as 'My Sister's A Barista: How they made Starbucks a home away from home', this new 2012 edition has been updated to bring the brand up to date.

In Pour Your Heart Into It, former CEO and now chairman emeritus Howard Schultz illustrates the principles that have shaped the Starbucks phenomenon, sharing the wisdom he has gained from his quest to make great coffee part of the American experience. The success of Starbucks Coffee Company is one of the most amazing business stories in decades. What started as a single store on Seattle's waterfront has grown into the largest coffee chain on the planet. Just as remarkable as this incredible growth is the fact that Starbucks has managed to maintain its renowned commitment to product excellence and employee satisfaction. Marketers, managers, and aspiring entrepreneurs will discover how to turn passion into profit in this definitive chronicle of the company that "has changed everything... from our tastes to our language to the face of Main Street" (Fortune).

Details the history of the company from its local Seattle beginnings to becoming a successful, international corporation.

Founded in 1971 and acquired by CEO Howard Schultz in 1987, Starbucks was an American success story. In forty years it grew from a single-location coffee roaster in Seattle, Washington to a multibillion-dollar global enterprise that operated more than 17,000 retail coffee shops in fifty countries and sold coffee beans, instant coffee, tea, and ready-to-drink beverages in tens of thousands of grocery and mass merchandise stores. However, as Starbucks moved into new market contexts as part of its aggressive growth strategy, the assets and activities central to its competitive advantage in its retail coffee shops were altered or weakened, which made it more vulnerable to competitive threats from both higher and lower quality entrants. The company also had to make decisions on vertical integration. This case study discusses these issues.

WAKE UP AND SMELL THE SUCCESS! You already know the Starbucks story. Since 1992, its stock has risen a staggering 5,000 percent! The genius of Starbucks success lies in its ability to create personalized customer experiences, stimulate business growth, generate profits, energize employees, and secure customer loyalty-all at the same time. The Starbucks Experience contains a robust blend of home-brewed ingenuity and people-driven philosophies that have made Starbucks one of the world's "most admired" companies, according to Fortune magazine. With unique access to Starbucks personnel and resources, Joseph Michelli discovered that the success of Starbucks is driven by the people who work there-the "partners"-and the special experience they create for each customer. Michelli reveals how you can follow the Starbucks way to Reach out to entire communities Listen to individual workers and consumers Seize growth opportunities in every market Custom-design a truly satisfying experience that benefits everyone involved Filled with real-life insider stories, eye-opening anecdotes, and solid step-by-step strategies, this fascinating book takes you deep inside one of the most talked-about companies in the world today. For anyone who wants to learn from the best-and be the best-The Starbucks Experience is a rich, heady brew of unforgettable user-friendly ideas.

ABOUT THE BOOK Coffee without people is a theoretical construct. People without coffee are somewhat diminished as well.” Dave Olsen, as quoted by Howard Schultz The Starbucks story is a contemporary fairy tale beloved by investors and latte-lovers alike . Once upon a time, it goes, there was a charming little store near Seattle’s Pike Place Market, with an old wooden counter and some coffee bins. A very few discriminating coffee drinkers bought their beans there. Ten years later, it was . . . well, five stores that sold high-quality bulk coffee beans to a few more discriminating coffee drinkers. Then Howard Schultz entered the picture. Today Starbucks has over 16,000 stores: But more than that, it’s the very seat of coffee magic. Starbucks changed the way Americans talk about and experience coffee. And Howard Schultz is the wizard who made it happen. In Pour Your Heart into It, Schultz tells the story of how a unique business philosophy shaped Starbucks from the mid-’80s into the mid-’90s, transforming not only the coffee experience in America, but the business landscape as well. It’s a philosophy built around a couple of core ideas:every business should “stand for something”—in this case, the uncompromising quality of the coffee, anda business can treat its employees with respect, and take care of its employees, and still be highly successful; and in fact, it’s the only right way to succeed, according to Schultz. It’s clear that Schultz hopes to inspire other corporate leaders with this book. It’s less a prescription for success than an exhortation to corporate America: Hey, have a heart! Stop treating employees purely as an expense that detracts from the bottom line and start understanding that they are the business in a very real sense. A business that invests in its employees and treats them well will see them become enthusiastic “ambassadors.” If you take it a step further, as Starbucks did, and give them an actual ownership stake in the company, they will work as hard as they can to make sure it succeeds. EXCERPT FROM THE BOOK We gradually accepted the fact that we had to adapt the store to our customers’ needs,” he says, and learn how to balance customer requests and desires with his vision—but at the same time, not make too many compromises and wind up diluting the integrity of either the coffee itself or the romance of the coffee experience. In 1987, not long after Schult opened his third Il Giornale store, Jerry Baldwin and Gordon Bowker decided to sell Starbucks. Bowker was ready to focus on other things, and Baldwin felt he needed to focus on running Peet’s. To Schultz it was fate: of course he would buy Starbucks. But some of his investors came up with their own plan to buy it and, he was convinced, give him a much smaller role. Schult had to go to his remaining investors with an alternate plan. Most of them bought in, and soon he had the money needed to purchase Starbucks. A mere five years after moving to Seattle to work on marketing for Starbucks, Howard Schultz had become its owner, and there were no longer any barriers to his vision of grand expansion. PART TWO: REINVENTING THE COFFEE EXPERIENCE: The private years, 1987-1992 Act Your Dreams with Open Eyes When Schultz stepped back into Starbucks, this time in his new role as owner, one of the biggest challenges facing him was poor morale. He knew that addressing it had to be his first task. But he also needed to hire more experienced management: both he and Dave Olsen (who had been managing the Il Giornale stores) had limited experience, and certainly wouldn’t be able to handle the planned expansion to 125 new stores over the next five years. Meanwhile, with the merging of Il Giornale and Starbucks, there was also an opportunity to revisit the logo. Buy the book to continue reading!