Seminar paper from the year 2004 in the subject Business economics - General, grade: 1 (A), Lappeenranta University of Technology, course: IBTM program WS 2004, language: English, abstract: Starbucks Corporation was founded in 1985 by Howard Schultz. The origins of Starbucks reach back to 1971, when the Starbucks Coffee Company was founded by three students in Seattle. These students, Gerald Baldwin, Gordon Bowker and Zev Siegl love coffee and tea. And this was the only reason why the set up the Starbucks Coffee Company. They just want to bring the best coffee in the world to Seattle. This time Starbucks only sold the coffee beans and the according coffee machines and mills. In the first ten years four more stores were set up. Howard Schultz, who was working in a Swedish house ware company this time, recognized the development and increasing demand of coffee mills of Starbucks. Infected by his interest in this company he started his research in Starbucks. He often went to Seattle and always met the founders of Starbucks, trying to convince them to employ him. Howard Schultz, who had no idea about coffee, but a lot of knowledge about selling, stayed very obstinate and so finally in middle of 1982 he became a manager at Starbucks. Since he joined the company he started to learn as much about coffee as he could. Inspired from the Italian coffee culture, which he got know during a visit in Milan, he wanted to introduce a coffee bar culture in the United States. After disagreements with his partners he decided to set up his own business. So, in 1985 he opened his first coffee bar in Seattle - Il Giornale. To get the capital he needed he spoke to 242 investors. 217 declined, but the others gave him the money to win the competition together with Starbucks.In 1987 he could purchase the Starbucks Coffee Company and most important the brand name that he used for all his stores, as Starbucks was a more familiar brand to the Americans. When he acquired Starbucks for US-$ 3.8 million the company had already 11 stores and about 100 employees. He kept almost all the employees because he also wanted to make Starbucks become a social company. So, he also paid more than the minimum wage, cares for good health insurances and even offered stock options to part-time employees. So it was no surprise that Starbucks had the lowest fluctuation rate among the restaurant and fast food business sector. But today also some ex-employees mention that the good and social image of Starbucks is a fallacy, as there are long working hours and not many chances to be promoted.
