How Starbucks Took Over The World

Starbucks doesn't actually have an ancient origin as many people believe. The Starbucks legacy actually began in 1971 in Seattle, Washington. An English teacher named Jerry Baldwin, a history teacher named Zev Siegl, and a writer known as Gordon Bowker are the main characters in today's story.

One day, they met the founder of the famous Peet's Coffee & Tea, Alfred Peet. He showed them all the ups and downs of gourmet coffee brewing, and they absolutely fell in love with it. They were so inspired, in fact, that they decided to quit the life of teaching and try their hand at their very own coffee business, later known as Starbucks Coffee. So a lot of people are probably wondering.

Why the name Starbucks?
Well, as stated in an interview by Gordon himself, they were originally going to go with the name Cargo House Coffee. But after speaking with a friend who owned an advertising agency, Gordon was told that words that began with an st- sound were very powerful in a company name.

While looking at a map of Mount Rainier, he spotted an old mining town named Strabo, and it caught his attention. After seeing this, his mind instantly jumped to a character in Moby Dick known as Starbuck. Thus, the first store under the name Starbucks was formed on March 30, 1971, in Seattle, Washington.

The store was located at 2000 Western Avenue, and it sold roasted whole bean coffee. At this point in history, Starbucks sold 21 varieties of tea, including these, which I probably can't pronounce because I'm not a tea connoisseur.

They also sold 12 different varieties of coffee beans, which will also be listed on the screen right now. Believe it or not, they didn't actually sell brewed coffee at this point, but they were instead focused on the sale of gourmet coffee beans themselves.

The original Starbucks at the first location was very successful, and the trio managed to open a second location in University Village in 1972. While the second location was performing very well, the landlord of the original location ended up selling the property, and the whole. the building was going to be demolished.

So, in order to keep their business up and running, they moved their original location to the famous Pike's Place, never to be moved ever again. In fact, this location is actually still standing in the same place today. So, at this point, Starbucks had two locations, the original store which was now located at Pike's Place and the second store that is in University Village. During the following years, three more locations were opened.

The third location was opened in Bellevue, Washington, the fourth at a place called Capitol Hill, and, finally, the fifth location was opened in an area called University Way in 1982. At this point, the original trio was still in charge of Starbucks, and they had recently hired a new director of retail operations known as Howard Schultz. Now, keep him in your head, because he's gonna be super important very soon. In 1984, in order to expand and increase its revenue even further, Starbucks began providing wholesale coffee beans too fine restaurants and espresso bars in the nearby area.

At the same time, Howard Schultz, the man who we previously mentioned, traveled to Italy and noticed how popular espresso was with the people, and he really enjoyed the concept. Upon returning to the States, he tried to persuade the Starbucks owners to sell gourmet espresso along with the other products that were offered in the stores.

After a successful test of his strategy, the owners still refused his idea, because they want to become a full-blown cafe and wanted to stick with the coffee bean sales business. Schultz became very irritated and saw an opportunity, an opportunity that would be very crucial to Starbucks as we know it today.

He left the company in 1985 and received funds to open his very own gourmet coffee cafe. This cafe was very successful, and Schultz made his money back very quickly. Two years after the opening of his coffee cafe, the original owners of Starbucks wanted to focus on wholesale coffee sales and were not interested in the retail aspect anymore. So they sold all their retail Starbucks locations to Schultz in 1988 for $3.8 million.

These were merged with Schultz' personal cafes and placed under the tag The Starbucks Corporation. With new owners, the Starbucks business model was changing and rapid growth occurred. Within the next two years, there would be a total of 17 stores in the area. Also, at this point, Starbucks began to expand outside of Seattle. By the end of 1989, there were over 55 stores, and Starbucks was roasting over two million pounds of coffee per year. Because of this large increase in the amount of coffee being sold. there was also a large increase in the demand for new Starbucks locations.

By the year 1992, Starbucks had expanded to a whopping 135 locations around the United States and Canada. They expanded so large that they also had to expand their headquarters. This year, they had yearly revenues of over $72 million, so they decided to go public on the national stock market under the trading symbol of SBUX. This was the golden age for Starbucks, and people were loving it more than ever. So they decided to introduce new menu items that are still loved to this day.

For example, in 1985, the blended frappuccino Recipe was introduced along with the Starbucks brand of ice cream, which, believe it or not, I don't know if this is still a thing, but that sounds kind of interesting. Anyways, at this time, Starbucks had an astonishing 677 locations in North America alone. This is insane compared to the 135 locations they had just three years earlier. Because of this expansion, they also opened a roasting facility in York, Pennsylvania to keep up with the ever-increasing demand for their lovely coffee.

Now, you may think that this rapid growth is crazy and would probably never happen again, but, trust me, it happened many, many more times. Just one year later, in 1996, they had over 1,015 stores, and they opened their first international stores in Japan and Singapore. Within the next couple of years, they would keep rapidly expanding and open up coffee chains in various countries around the world.

In 1998, Starbucks acquired a tea company in Portland, Oregon known as Tazo or Tay-zo, however, you say it. It allowed them to expand their products into grocery stores around the United States. time by entering the UK market with the $83 million purchase of the British Seattle Coffee Company.

These stores were also transformed into Starbucks. By the year 2000, structural changes began to happen to the company when Schultz transitioned from chairman and chief executive officer to chairman and chief global strategist. A person named Orin Smith was promoted to president and CEO of the company.

They also began to introduce organic options at this point as well. Fast forward again, and by 2002, the chain had over 5,886 stores around the world and were expanding even faster than ever. This continued up to 2008, when the original CEO, Howard Schultz, returned as president. Just a little side note, but in this year, just six years later than the previous milestone of 5,886 stores, the chain now had an astonishing 16,680 stores.

If you add it up, over the span of six years or 2,190 days, the store added 10,794 stores. This is equal to about five stores per day every day for six years. This was also one of Starbucks' biggest periods at the time with earnings over $10.4 billion, which is an astronomical increase from the 72 million in sales just 16 years earlier. In 2011, they launched the Starbucks brand line of K-cups, in 2012, they launched blonde roast coffee, and by 2015, they reached the milestone of having 99% ethically sourced coffee.

As of today, Starbucks operates 22,696 stores around the world, and as of 2016, have had annual earnings of $21.3 billion. Starbucks is on an upward track of constant growth, and I doubt that this growth is going to change any time soon.

Anyways, what are your thoughts of Starbucks and this Article? Feel free to let me know in the comments below.

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