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convince them of the potential of the idea. Eventually, Starbucks started serving espresso coffee in 1985, when it opened its sixth store in downtown Seattle. The concept was an immense success and within two months, the store was serving over 800 customers a day (espresso sales were much higher than sales of the best selling whole mean coffee).
Schultz was keen on extending this concept to other stores as well, but Baldwin believed that selling beverages distracted the company from the core business of selling top quality whole bean coffee. Eventually in 1985 Schultz left Starbucks and started his own coffee bar called Il Giornale. Bowker and Baldwin, along with a few private investors provided financial backing for this venture and Starbucks supplied the coffee beans.
As Schultz explained, the bar became the prototype for his long-term vision:
The ideas was to create a chain of coffeehouses that would become America’s “third place.” At the time, most Americans had two places in their lives – home and work. But I believed that people needed another place, a place where they could go to relax and enjoy others, or just be by themselves. I envisioned a place that would be separate from home or work, a place that would mean different things to different people.
In 1987 Baldwin, Bowker and Siegl decided to sell Starbucks, with its six retail stores, roasting plants, and the corporate name. Schultz, along with a group of local investors, bought Starbucks for $3.7 million. Eventually, he changed Il Giornale’s name to Starbucks Cofee Company and merged the two businesses.
As soon as Schultz took over, he immediately began opening new stores. The stores sold whole beans and premium-priced coffee beverages by the cup and catered primarily to affluent, well-educated, white-collar patrons (skewed female) between the ages of 25 and 44. By 1992 the company had 140 such stores in the Northwest and Chicago and was successfully competing against other small-scale coffee chains.
The same year, 1992, Schultz decided to take the company public. As he recalled, many Wall Street analysts were dubious about the idea:
They’d say: “you mean, you are going to sell coffee for a dollar in a paper cup, with Italian names that no one in America can say? At a time in America when no one’s drinking coffee? And I can get coffee at the local doughnut shop for 50 cents? Are you kidding me?
Ignoring the sceptics, Schultz forged ahead with the public offering, raising $25 million in the process. The proceeds allowed Starbucks to open more stores across the US. From practically the very beginning, the company expanded at a breakneck pace, growing store count 40% to 60% a year. It wasn't just about coffee. Starbucks took care of its employees as well as its beans. In an almost unheard-of move for a food retailer, the company offered health insurance, a costly policy that Schultz insisted on. For him, it was personal: as a child, he had watched his family's finances crumble when his father suffered a broken ankle at his job as a delivery-truck driver.本论文由英语论文网 www.51lunwen.org整理提供
By 2000, Schultz had unequivocally established Starbucks as the dominant specialty coffee brand in North America. The company was now serving 20 million unique customers in well over 5,000 stores around the globe and was opening on average three new stores a day. Sales had climbed at a compound annual growth rate of 40% since the company had gone public and net earning