Schultz Transcript Clip 1
Creating Starbucks and the Starbucks Experience
HOWARD SCHULTZ:
I went to Seattle in 1979 for the first time. It was one of those majestic days which we have now and then, but sunny skies and just beautiful. And I saw this little coffee company and really tried everything I could to get them to hire me. And I was fortunate enough that I joined Starbucks in '82 when there were four stores, and then in August of '87 was fortunate enough with a group of investors, I had no money of my own, to buy Starbucks for $3.8 million.
We had six retail stores and about 100 employees.
GARRICK UTLEY:
All right, today how many stores?
HOWARD SCHULTZ:
Thirteen thousand.
GARRICK UTLEY:
And growing. How many employees?
HOWARD SCHULTZ:
A hundred-forty-thousand.
GARRICK UTLEY:
How many new stores a day?
HOWARD SCHULTZ:
Six new stores a day.
GARRICK UTLEY:
How many new employee partners a day?
HOWARD SCHULTZ:
Four-hundred new people a day.
GARRICK UTLEY:
Oh, so HR has its work cut out for it, right?
HOWARD SCHULTZ:
Yeah, I've very fond of saying we're not in the coffee business serving people but we're in the people business serving coffee. And we really are the quintessential people business.
GARRICK UTLEY:
Well, we're talking about global innovation here, and what I find interesting, and others have written about it, including yourself, is that here is this small coffee company, you had an idea, but really much of the inspiration came from overseas.
HOWARD SCHULTZ:
Right.
GARRICK UTLEY:
You're in Europe, and you have the Italian espresso bars, French cafes, British pubs. How do you put--because that's the real essence of an innovator on a global scale. How did that come to you?
HOWARD SCHULTZ:
Yeah, I was in Italy in '83, and, like so many people, became enamored with the Italian coffee bar, which is so ubiquitous throughout the country. And what I saw was not only the coffee but I think, most importantly, the human condition and the sense of community that existed in these stores.
And the dream at the time was to try to bring that back and create a place in America--almost a third place between home and work--that could act as this community gathering place. And, you know, candidly I could sit here today and tell you we dreamt about 13,000 stores, but the truth is we were just trying to create a entrepreneurial company that put people first and never imagined that it would one day be this big or be in 40 countries.
GARRICK UTLEY:
Well, if you went up and down the streets of American cities or you went up and down Lexington or Third or Second Avenue for a long time you had the bars, whether it was the Irish bars, the guys were in there drinking their beers. But there was no place for women to sit down. There was no place for this kind of community. So there was that hunger, as you discovered, for what the Europeans and others had already discovered.
HOWARD SCHULTZ:
Yeah, I would say that that hunger has grown. I think technology has given us lots of tools and lots of resources, but it's also made us very secular in what we do every day. And there's a need and a longing for human connection.
And that human connection every day comes to life in a Starbucks store. It's interesting that people say I don’t talk to anyone at Starbucks, but it's the most social thing I do all day. And I think people have recognized that there's something about the Starbucks experience that’s very intimate, despite the fact that sometimes you don’t talk to anyone but get your coffee.