The Starbucks Coffee Company

The Starbucks Coffee Company is a business that operates on the cutting edge of the latest consumer needs and trends. This innovative company, at just over 30 years old, can brag of lighting fast growth as well as sustained profit. Starbucks' success can be attributed to its winning recipe of organization, quality, skilled management, and its ability to get people to over pay for its products. Starbucks has enjoyed success with managing its business in the face of both external and internal factors because, it has responded accurately to rapid change, globalization, technology, and the ever-changing world of e-business.

In 1971 Starbucks Coffeehouse opened its doors, in Seattle's Pikes Peak Marketplace, for the first time. Three enterprising students with an affinity for the Berkeley, California coffeehouse scene, wanted to take this idea to Seattle. They hung a picture of a two-finned siren on the door, and began brewing quality coffee for the citizens of Seattle to enjoy.

Starbucks Bean Life display in Miami at the Latin ...

Grounds for Your Garden, the Starbucks recycling s...

English: Starbucks' headquarters building in Seatt...

The establishment was named Starbucks after Captain Ahab's first mate in the classic novel Moby Dick. For ten years the Starbucks reputation grew around Seattle, until it caught the eye of a businessman named Howard Schultz. In 1982 Schultz, seeing the potential, brought in a group of investors and took over as Director of Retail Operations and Marketing (Starbucks).

Schultz who, had traveled to Milan, Italy had seen enough coffee bars in his travels there to encourage his investors to open a similar establishment in downtown Seattle. This bar concept was so successful, that by 1987 Starbucks had a total of seventeen locations. By 1994, Starbucks had grown to eighty-four stores, including the opening of a new roasting plant for its coffee, a partnership with Horizon Air, and the expansion of mail orders. The account with Horizon Air would be followed...