How Did Jerry Baldwin Launch Starbucks And How Did He Succeed?
How did the Starbucks idea crop up?
Three University of San Francisco students, Jerry Baldwin, Gordon Bowker, and Zev Siegl, became business partners. The trio began selling high-quality coffee beans and coffee roasting equipment from Alfred Peet. Initially, for nine months, Peet’s Coffee was served. Starting in 1971, within a decade, Starbucks had five stores, becoming a coffee giant by the millennium’s end.
Starbucks Background
Starbucks bought Peet’s Coffee in 1983, and Howard Schultz was to manage the retail marketing and sales of the company. He visited the espresso bars of Milan, Italy, and the coffee culture was an attraction with the Italian coffee bars’ romance.
Howard came home with a determination to establish the same coffee culture in the United States but did not receive support. He left the company and wished to begin his own successful business empire. The founder invested in Schultz’s vision and did more research in Italy about espresso bars and coffee.
Starbucks Expansion
The first coffee bar was in 1986 in the Columbia Seafirst Center. It resulted in more centers opening in Seattle and Vancouver. He hired Dave Oslen as an employee trainer and coffee consultant. Schultz, a year later, was thriving, and frustration was high at Starbucks.
Schultz came to his old colleagues with an offer of strategic partnerships, asking for $4 million for the Starbucks chain’s six units. They sold Olsen and kept him as a Starbucks roaster and coffee buyer. He merged, and the name changed to Starbucks and then became Starbucks Corporation.
Starbucks Corporation, in August 1987, had 11 stores and below 100 employees. By 1989, Chicago had nine Starbucks stores. Growing rapidly, it grew from $50 million to $500 million in a period of five years. In 1988, Starbucks began operating in more than 33 stores and its reputation by word of mouth was growing steadily.
Starbucks invested in a computer network and hired McDonald’s information technology to design a POS. The aim was to provide a better customer experience…..(more)
Originally Published from Tycoonstory
