To sum it all up the Coffee Giant know as Starbucks Coffee, made a huge impact in all of our lives, from the way we drink our coffee, to the type of coffee we choose. Coffee was never such an idealized item until Starbucks Coffee company showed up and capitalized the entire industry, instead of ordering a plain coffee with cream and sugar we know have a wider variety to choose from including, cappuccino, espresso, different coffee flavors, irish cream, french vanilla, and others, there is just so much more it's incredible. Even though all this was available before the Coffee Mongol commercialized coffee completely, it didn't have much interest with any of us. And then the phenomenon, Now we cant seem to live without all these wiled coffee flavor's.
Lets take a step back in time:
At the beginning when the coffee giant first started out in Seattle in 1971, Starbucks coffee was just three friends with a passion for fresh gourmet coffee, Jerry Baldwin, Zev Siegl and Gordon Bowker, they opened a small shop and began selling fresh-roasted, gourmet coffee beans and brewing and roasting accessories.
In 1980 Zev Siegl wanted out to explore his opportunities elsewhere. By that time Starbucks coffee was the biggest roaster in Washington with six different stores. In 1981 the little coffee giant managed to get the attention of Howard Schultz, a plastics salesman that noticed the huge supply of plastic drip coffee thermoses they were buying from Hammarplast.
Starbucks Coffee 1982, history was marked forever when Baldwin hired the highly energetic Schultz as the new marketing developer. It was not long after that he was sent on a business trip to an international housewares show in Milan, Italy 1983. Schultz was amazed and amused with the vibrant coffee culture of Italy. In another town nearby Verona, Schultz had his first caffe’ latte’ and, as he noticed people at the cafe talking and laughing exiguously while sipping on their coffees in the luxurious surroundings, ideas starting flowing.
In what he describes as an epiphany, the idea hit him, "I could start a community gathering place like the great coffee house of Italy in the United States?" he thought to himself. This idea would place Starbucks coffee history into the annuls of business journals for many years to come.
Latter on, while back in the united states, Schultz's idea did not go over well with Baldwin and didn't think it would be a good idea to wager over into the restaurant business aswell distracting him from his original goal of selling whole coffee beans. However, he did let him try out a small espresso bar in the corner of one of the coffee stores. It was an immediate success and Schultz branched out on his own and opened Il Giornale, a coffee house named after Italy’s largest newspaper, ‘The Daily’.
1987 Starbucks coffee was up for sale and Schultz managed to raise $3.8 million by convincing investors of his vision, one hundred and twenty-five outlets in the next five years. Schultz modified the Starbucks bare-breasted mermaid logo into a more socially acceptable figure, changed the name of Il Giornale to Starbucks and converted the six existing Starbucks coffee roasting shops into a more elegant, suitable coffee houses. Starbucks coffee history was just starting to take form.
Shultz reached his goal and more by 125 stores in 5 years, 1992 there were 165 cafes up and running. Today there are more then 8,000 stores in 30 different countries and annual revenues over $7.5 billion.