STARBUCKS

Howard Schultz was a poor kid who grew up in a housing project in Brooklyn, New
York. Now he’s the CEO of the largest coffee chain in the world – Starbucks. He grew up
in a working-class neighborhood and he didn’t grow up with a lot of money. But what he
had was a strong sense of community.

After college, Howard became a salesman. During a work trip to Seattle in 1981, he came
across this little coffee bean shop called Starbucks. And he felt immediately in love with
it. He eventually persuaded the owner to hire him. So, Howard started to work at this
little coffee bean shop called Starbucks. The owner sent him to Milan for a trade show. In
Milan, he noticed that the coffee shops there are very different from the American ones.
Milan coffee shops are the places where people come and meet. In the Italian coffee shop,
he felt a strong sense of community there, kind of reminded him of home.

This was in the late 80’s and Howard noticed that there was no place like this – a little
coffee shop just for people to hang out in America. Howard realized that in order for
Starbucks to grow from a few just coffee bean stores, he has to do something differently.

After his trip to Milan, he was thinking maybe Starbucks is in the wrong business after all.
It should not be in the beverage business. Instead, it should be a third place between work
and home where people come out and meet new people. A few years down the road, he
was able to raise money from investors. And he bought the coffee bean shops by himself
and started transforming them into a product type of what Starbucks looks like today.

Howard is a born salesman. He really understands the idea of branding from the logo that
goes on Starbucks cup, to the green aprons that every that every barista wear in the
Starbucks shop, everything is branded. And it added value to Starbucks coffee.

Before Starbucks came into the picture coffee was nothing fancy in America. It was sold
for a few cents a cup. By introducing this idea of this “third place” between work and
home, Starbucks was able to brand itself into a place of community for people to hang
out.

It truly became what Howard envisioned it would be today. It was able to sell the idea of
community not just the coffee. And that brought Starbucks to become the iconic brand
that it is today, serving about 100 million people a week.

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