Starbucks Coffee

STARBUCKS

The year is 1971. At the time, most of the coffee being consumed in the United States consisted of finely ground coffee sold in vacuum-sealed tins. The coffee definitely was not gourmet and sales have begun to decline. Along came three friends, Zev Siegl, Gordon Bowker, and Gerald Baldwin with the urge to start a new business. But what business would they start? One day, a light bulb finally went off in their heads as they decided their new business would be in gourmet coffee.

The idea first grew its roots as Sigel, Bowker, and Baldwin traveled together in Europe. The coffee served in Europe was extremely different than the kind Americans were used to drinking. European coffee was rich and dark. After returning home, Baldwin had a taste of Alfred Peet’s fine coffee. Alfred Peet was a coffee roaster from Holland who after having a taste of American coffee, decided to open up a shop to offer a better tasting coffee. After Baldwin had a taste of Peet’s coffee, him and his friends decided a gourmet coffee shop would be the way to go. Alfred Peet even stayed on to help roast some coffee beans for the guys and taught them about coffee roasting the European way.

At last Starbucks was born. Named after the first mate in Herman Melville’s Moby Dick, the name Starbucks also pays homage to Seattle’s seafaring heritage. The first store opened up in Seattle’s Pike Place Market. The business started to grow.

Starbucks had begun buying a lot of special drip coffee makers from the Swedish kitchen equipment company, Perstorp. In 1982, a young marketing manager at Perstorp by the name of Howard Schultz decided to stop by Seattle and see what was going on. Shortly thereafter, Shcultz stayed and became partner. Shcultz then took a trip to Milan. While at a coffee shop in Milan, Shcultz became inspired and had a vision of what Starbucks would become. His vision was of a place where the experience not only involved great coffee, but a staff that was familiar with their customers as well as their orders. Not only would the staff know the customer’s name, but would also know the customer’s order and begin working on it as soon as a customer walked in the doors. Shcultz tried to share this idea with his other partners.

Neither Bowker nor Baldwin was interested in Shcultz’s idea of the complete experience.