The History Of Starbucks

Starbucks, a popular coffee retailer, was founded in 1971 when the store first opened in Seattle, Washington by Jerry Baldwin, Zev Siegl, and Gordon Bowker. At first, the store, located at Seattle’s Pike Place Market, only sold coffee beans and coffee making equipment. About ten years later when Howard Schultz was hired as the Director of Retail Operations and Marketing, Starbucks began providing coffee to fine restaurants and espresso bars. In 1983, Schultz traveled to Italy and noticed the popularity of espresso bars in Milan. He was very impressed and wanted to develop a similar coffeehouse culture in Seattle, so he took his ideas to the founders of Starbucks. When he finally convinced the founders of Starbucks to test the coffeehouse

He opened stores in Chicago and Vancouver, Canada and had a total of 55 stores by 1989. Since then, Starbucks has become a very successful billion dollar company with over 238,000 employees and ranking number 196 on the Fortune 500 list. Not only do they sell coffee beverages and an assortment of bakery items handcrafted at their stores, they also sell drinkware and coffee makers in store and on their website, http://www.starbucks.com/ as well. Starbucks corporate headquarters is located in Seattle, Washington, but they have nearly 24,000 stores located in almost 70 different countries. On August 2, 1996, their first international coffeehouse opened in Tokyo in the upscale Ginza shopping region. In 1996, Japan was the third-largest importer of coffee in the world, behind the U.S. and Germany, and Starbucks “hoped to bring a taste of Seattle to millions of new customers.” President of Starbucks International, Howard Behar said, "Our objective, the greatest thing that could happen, is that someone in Japan would think that Starbucks started in Japan. People in Chicago thought Starbucks started in Chicago when the company opened stores there.” According to Behar, Starbucks also hoped to encourage the same kind of coffee craze in Japan that it has created in North America, not through marketing but through

Shanghai has 256 Starbucks stores, which is the most of any Chinese city, but the city with the most Starbucks stores in the world is Seoul. The South Korean capital has 284 locations, seven more locations than New York City’s 277 stores. Canada currently has the most Starbucks stores after the United States, with 1,396 locations, but China is quickly catching up. According to company filings, sales in China and the Asia-Pacific region grew faster than any other, and their sales accounted for 6.2% of Starbucks Corporation’s sales in 2013. In 2013, 588 Starbucks locations also opened in China and the Asia-Pacific region. In its 2013 annual report, the company says it looks forward to establishing China as its largest market outside of the United States. With a goal to open 500 new stores in China in 2016 and entering the China ecommerce market, Starbucks Corporation seems to have a strategy in place to expand its international operations. Since its takeoff in China, Starbucks has made sure that it adjusts itself to the local environment and this strategy has been influential to its growth in the region. The company continues to do so as part of its largescale