Look, I poured drinks for a living for forty-one years, so trust me when I say I know a thing or two about a place where people come in, sit down, and stay a while. Coffee, beer, doesn't matter. The trick is the room. Starbucks figured that out, then forgot it, and now they're trying real hard to remember it again. Pull up a stool. Let me tell you the story.
Three guys, one shop, 1971
The whole thing starts in Seattle in 1971. Three buddies, Jerry Baldwin, Zev Siegl, and Gordon Bowker, opened up a little spot at Pike Place Market and started selling fresh-roasted beans and the gear to brew them. That was it. No lattes, no pumpkin spice, no app. Just beans. (Imagine telling those three what their logo would end up on. They'd faint.)
For about a decade Starbucks was a Pacific Northwest bean store, plain and simple. Siegl cashed out in 1980. Baldwin and Bowker kept it going. By then they had six shops in Washington, which was a lot of beans for one corner of the country.
Enter the salesman
Here's where the story turns. There's a guy named Howard Schultz, working for a Swedish housewares outfit called Hammarplast, and he notices this little Seattle company is buying a suspicious number of his plastic drip cones. Like, a LOT. So he flies out to take a look, falls in love with the place, and in 1982 talks his way into a job as their head of marketing.
A year later the company sends him to a trade show in Milan. Schultz takes a side trip, walks into a Verona espresso bar, orders a caffe latte (his first, if you can believe that), and watches the room. People standing at the counter, talking. Regulars getting greeted by name. A whole social scene built around six ounces of coffee. He has what he later called his epiphany. Cute word for it. I'd have called it a tab.
The pitch that got nowhere (at first)
Schultz comes home all lit up. Why don't we sell drinks by the cup? Make it like Italy? Baldwin, the boss, says no thanks, pal, we sell beans, that's what we do. (You ever try to talk a stubborn guy into a new menu? It's like watching paint dry, except the paint argues with you.)
Eventually Baldwin lets him test a tiny espresso bar in the back of one store, just to shut him up. Of course it's a hit. Of course Schultz wants to go bigger. Of course Baldwin still says no. So in 1985 Schultz goes off and opens his own coffee bar called Il Giornale, after the Italian newspaper. Two months in, he's serving 700 customers a day.
The plot twist: he buys the place
1987. Baldwin and Bowker decide to sell off the Starbucks name and the six stores that came with it. Asking price: $3.7 million. Schultz hustles up the money from local investors, walks back in the door he used to work for, and the place is his. He folds Il Giornale into Starbucks, slaps the green mermaid on the front, and goes to work.
Seventeen stores in 1987. By 1992 they go public on the Nasdaq. By 1997 they've got more than 1,400 locations, in the U.S., Japan, and Singapore, of all places. (Singapore. For a coffee shop from Seattle. Tell me that's not nuts.)
The 2000s: when the green mermaid took over the world
This is the part where things get a little blurry, because they were opening stores so fast you couldn't keep up. The old article I'm working from said they hit 9,000 locations across 34 countries. That was around 2004. Cute number. Stick with me.
By the time you and I are reading this, in early 2026, Starbucks runs more than 41,000 stores in over 80 countries. The U.S. has roughly 16,900 of them. China is right behind with about 8,000. Japan and South Korea are basically tied around 2,000 each. That ain't a coffee shop anymore, that's an empire.
Along the way they bought Tazo tea, partnered with Dreyer's on ice cream, sold CDs at the counter (yes, CDs, ask your grandkids what those were), put their coffee on United flights, and started selling whole bean bags at every supermarket in America. They tried Starbucks-branded liquor for a minute. It didn't take. Some ideas are just bar napkin doodles.
The post-Schultz years, and back again, and back again
Schultz stepped down as CEO once in 2000, came back in 2008 when things wobbled, stepped down again in 2017, and at one point was even running for president (briefly). The man cannot sit still. He came back as interim chief in 2022, then handed it off to a fellow named Laxman Narasimhan in 2023. That ride lasted about a year.
In September 2024 the board pushed Narasimhan out and brought in Brian Niccol, the guy who turned Chipotle around after their food-safety mess. Wall Street loved it; the stock popped 25 percent in one day, the biggest single-day jump the company ever had. Schultz, now officially “chairman emeritus” (a title that means “please stop calling us”), publicly blessed the new guy.
What Niccol's actually doing
His whole pitch is called “Back to Starbucks”, and you can probably guess what it means. The man wants the place to feel like a coffeehouse again, not a drive-through assembly line for an app order. Couple of things they've already brought back as of 2025:
- Real ceramic mugs if you order “for here” (a redesigned one rolling out wider through 2026 and 2027).
- Handwritten names on the cups, in Sharpie, the way they used to do it.
- Free refills on brewed coffee and tea while you're sitting in the cafe.
- Condiment bars back out where you can reach the half-and-half yourself.
Whether it works is anybody's guess. (My guess: helps a little, doesn't fix everything.) But you've got to admit it's a charming pitch. The guy's basically telling you what every old bartender knows. The room matters. The greeting matters. Knowing somebody's name matters. None of that is rocket science. They just lost the thread for a stretch.
What this means if you're 65 and just want a decent cup of coffee
Couple takeaways for the rest of us, the people who actually go in and sit down:
- If you want it in a real mug, ask for it “for here.” They have to give it to you in ceramic now in most stores. No more leaning over a paper cup like it's a soup kitchen.
- The free refill thing is real, but you have to stay in the cafe. Hot brewed coffee or hot/iced tea, refilled while you're there. Walk out with the first one and the deal's off.
- You don't need the app. Despite what every barista under thirty will tell you. Walk in, point at a thing, hand them money. The world keeps turning.
- The morning rush is for chumps. Go between 9:30 and 11 if you want a chair, a quiet corner, and a barista who has time to spell your name right.
Fifty-five years ago, three guys in Seattle were arguing about beans. Now their grandkids' company is trying to remember how to be a place where people sit down. Funny old world. Order yourself a latte, kid. Tell the barista Bernie sent you. (They won't know who I am. That's fine.)
