Origins of Ordinary Things 2: Starbucks

We have reached an age where there is a Star­bucks in almost every cor­ner. Some cor­ners have two Star­bucks shops! Have you ever won­dered how Star­bucks began? You’re prob­a­bly won­der­ing why Star­bucks uses the mer­maid for its logo.

So in honor of this really cool place I blog in every Sat­ur­day, I am fea­tur­ing Star­bucks this week.

Star­bucks
Edited from Wikipedia

The orig­i­nal Star­bucks was opened in Pike Place Mar­ket in Seat­tle, Wash­ing­ton, in 1971 by three part­ners: Eng­lish teacher Jerry Bald­win, his­tory teacher Zev Siegel, and writer Gor­don Bowker. In the begin­ning, they sold high-quality cof­fee beans and cof­fee brew­ing equipment.

Entre­pre­neur Howard Schultz joined the com­pany in 1983, and, after a trip to Milan, Italy, advised that the com­pany sell cof­fee and espresso drinks as well as beans. The own­ers rejected this idea, believ­ing that get­ting into the bev­er­age busi­ness would dis­tract the com­pany from its pri­mary focus. To them, cof­fee was some­thing to be pre­pared in the home. Cer­tain that there was much money to be made sell­ing drinks to on-the-go Amer­i­cans, Schultz started the Il Gior­nale cof­fee bar chain in 1985.

In 1987, the three orig­i­nal own­ers sold the Star­bucks chain to Schultz. He rebranded the Il Gior­nale out­lets as Star­bucks and quickly began to expand. Star­bucks opened its first loca­tions out­side Seat­tle at Water­front Sta­tion in Van­cou­ver, British Colum­bia, and Chicago, Illi­nois, that same year. At the time of its ini­tial pub­lic offer­ing on the stock mar­ket in 1992, Star­bucks had grown to have 165 outlets.

The first Star­bucks out­side of North Amer­ica opened in Tokyo in 1996. In 1998, Star­bucks entered the U.K. mar­ket with the acqui­si­tion of the then 60-outlet, UK-based Seat­tle Cof­fee Com­pany, re-branding all its stores as Star­bucks. By Novem­ber 2005, Lon­don had more out­lets than Man­hat­tan. This sig­naled that Star­bucks had really become an inter­na­tional brand.

In April 2003, Star­bucks com­pleted the pur­chase of Seattle’s Best Cof­fee and Tor­refazione Italia from AFC Enter­prises, bring­ing the total num­ber of Starbucks-operated loca­tions world­wide to more than 6,400. On Sep­tem­ber 14, 2006, rival Diedrich Cof­fee announced that it would sell most of its company-owned retail stores to Star­bucks. This sale includes the company-owned loca­tions of the Oregon-based Cof­fee Peo­ple chain. Star­bucks has con­verted the Diedrich Cof­fee and Cof­fee Peo­ple stores to Star­bucks as of sum­mer 2007.

Star­bucks’ chair­man, Howard Schultz, has talked about mak­ing sure growth does not dilute the company’s cul­ture and the com­mon goal of the company’s lead­er­ship to act like a small company.

In Jan­u­ary 2008, Chair­man Howard Schultz resumed his roles as Pres­i­dent and Chief Exec­u­tive Offi­cer after an eight year hia­tus, and replaced Jim Don­ald, who took those posts in 2005 but decided to leave the com­pany in late 2007. Schultz’s prin­ci­pal chal­lenge is to restore what he calls the “dis­tinc­tive Star­bucks expe­ri­ence” in the face of rapid expansion.

On Jan­u­ary 31, 2008, Schultz announced that Star­bucks would dis­con­tinue its warm break­fast sand­wich prod­ucts, orig­i­nally sched­uled to launch nation­wide in 2008, in order to refo­cus the brand on all things coffee.

WHY IS IT CALLED STARBUCKS?

The com­pany is named in part after Star­buck, Cap­tain Ahab’s first mate in the book Moby Dick, as well as a turn-of-the-century min­ing camp (Starbo or Storbo) on Mount Rainier. Accord­ing to Howard Schultz’s book Pour Your Heart Into It: How Star­bucks Built a Com­pany One Cup at a Time, the name of the com­pany was derived from Moby Dick.

Gor­don Bowker liked the name “Pequod” (the ship in the novel), but his then cre­ative part­ner Terry Heck­ler responded, “No one’s going to drink a cup of Pee-quod!” Heck­ler sug­gested “Starbo.” Brain­storm­ing with these two ideas resulted in the com­pany being named for the Pequod’s first mate, Starbuck.

IS THAT A MERMAID IN THE LOGO?

From Pour Your Heart Into It: How Star­bucks Built a Com­pany One Cup at a Time

“Terry [Heck­ler] also poured over old marine books until he came up with a logo based on an old sixteenth-century Norse wood­cut: a two-tailed mer­maid, or siren, encir­cled by the store’s orig­i­nal name, Star­bucks Cof­fee, Tea, and Spice. That early siren, bare-breasted and Rube­nesque, was sup­posed to be as seduc­tive as cof­fee itself.”

Il Gior­nale: “Our logo reflected the empha­sis on speed. The Il Gior­nale name was inscribed in a green cir­cle that sur­rounded a head of Mer­cury, the swift mes­sen­ger god.“

“To sym­bol­ize the meld­ing of the two com­pa­nies [Il Giornarle and Star­bucks] and two cul­tures, Terry [Heck­ler] came up with a design that merged the two logos. We kept the Star­bucks siren with her starred crown, but made her more con­tem­po­rary. We dropped the tradition-bound brown, and changed the logo’s color to Il Giornarle’s more affirm­ing green.”