History of Starbucks Coffee
1970s
Starbucks originally opened in Seattle, Washington, on March 30, 1971. It was founded by business partners Jerry Baldwin, Zev Siegl and Gordon Bowker who first met as students at the University of San Francisco: The trio were inspired to sell high-quality coffee beans and equipment by coffee roasting entrepreneur Alfred Peet. Bowker recalls that a business partner of his, Terry Heckler, thought words beginning with the letters "st" were powerful, leading the founders to create a list of words beginning with "st," hoping to find a brand name. They chose "Starbo," a mining town in the Cascade Range and from there, the group remembered "Starbuck," the name of the chief mate in the book Moby-Dick. Bowker said, "Moby-Dick didn't have anything to do with Starbucks directly; it was only coincidental that the sound seemed to make sense." The first Starbucks store was located in Seattle at 2000 Western Avenue from 1971 to 1976. They later moved the café to 1912 Pike Place. During this time, Starbucks stores sold just coffee beans and not drinks. In its first two years of operation, Starbucks purchased green coffee beans from Peet's Coffee & Tea,. In 1973, Alfred Peet stopped supplying Starbucks and helped train their new Roastmaster, Jim Reynolds.
Alfred Peet, a coffee-roasting entrepreneur, was a major inspiration to the founders of Starbucks. Peet was a Dutch immigrant who had begun importing fine arabica coffees into the United States during the 1950s. In 1966 he opened a small store, Peet’s Coffee and Tea, in Berkeley, California, that specialized in importing first-rate coffees and teas. Peet’s success encouraged the Starbucks founders to base their business model on selling high-quality coffee beans and equipment, and Peet’s became the initial supplier of green coffee beans to Starbucks. The partners then purchased a used roaster from Holland, and Baldwin and Bowker experimented with Alfred Peet’s roasting techniques to create their own blends and flavours. By the early 1980s Starbucks had opened four stores in Seattle that stood out from the competitors with their top-quality fresh-roasted coffees. In 1980 Siegl decided to pursue other interests and left the two remaining partners, with Baldwin assuming the role of company president.
1980s
In 1984, the original owners of Starbucks, led by Jerry Baldwin, purchased Peet's Coffee. By 1986, the company operated six stores in Seattle and had only just begun to sell espresso coffee. In 1987, the original owners sold the Starbucks chain to former director of marketing Howard Schultz, who rebranded his Il Giornale coffee outlets as Starbucks and quickly began to expand the company. Also in 1987, Starbucks opened its first locations outside of Seattle in Waterfront Station in Vancouver, British Columbia, and Chicago, Illinois. By 1989, 46 Starbucks stores existed across the Pacific Northwest and Midwest, and the company was roasting more than 2,000,000 pounds (907,185 kg) of coffee annually.
2000s
In April 2003, Starbucks acquired Seattle's Best Coffee and Torrefazione Italia from AFC Enterprises for $72 million. The deal only gained 150 stores for Starbucks, but according to the Seattle Post-Intelligencer, the wholesale business was more significant.
From 2005 to 2007, Howard Behar served as President of Starbucks North America.
In September 2006, rival Diedrich Coffee announced that it would sell most of its company-owned retail stores to Starbucks, including most locations of Oregon-based Coffee People, escalating regional coffee wars. Starbucks converted the Diedrich Coffee and Coffee People locations to Starbucks. The Coffee People locations at Portland International Airport were excluded from the sale.
In early 2008, Starbucks started a community website, My Starbucks Idea, designed to collect suggestions and feedback from customers. Other users could comment and vote on suggestions. Journalist Jack Schofield noted that "My Starbucks seems to be all sweetness and light at the moment, which I don't think is possible without quite a lot of censorship."
In March 2008, Starbucks acquired Coffee Equipment Company, which was the manufacturer of the Clover Brewing System. It began testing the "fresh-pressed" coffee system at several Starbucks locations in Seattle, California, New York, and Boston.
In July 2008, during the Great Recession, Starbucks announced it was closing 600 underperforming company-owned stores and cutting U.S. expansion plans amid growing economic uncertainty. On July 29, 2008, Starbucks also cut almost 1,000 non-retail jobs as part of its bid to re-energize the brand and boost its profit. Of the new cuts, 550 of the positions were layoffs and the rest were unfilled jobs.
Additionally in July 2008, Starbucks announced that it would close 61 of its 84 stores in Australia in the following month. Nick Wailes, an expert in strategic management of the University of Sydney, commented that "Starbucks failed to truly understand Australia's café culture."
In January 2009, Starbucks announced the closure of an additional 300 underperforming stores and the elimination of 7,000 positions. CEO Howard Schultz also announced that he had received board approval to reduce his salary. Altogether, from February 2008 to January 2009, Starbucks terminated an estimated 18,400 U.S. jobs and began closing 977 stores worldwide.
In August 2009, Ahold announced closures and rebranding for 43 of its licensed store Starbucks kiosks for their US-based Stop & Shop and Giant supermarkets. [Source]