Finally, on the morning of March 30, he spotted the sandwich board out. Starbucks was in business. At first Siegl was the only paid employee, while Baldwin and Bowker kept their day jobs.
All three worked the store on Saturdays. Each partner took a distinct role in company management. Bowker liked to refer to himself as "a background power figure" Baldwin interview and strategized on ways to publicize the company. Baldwin, who had taken an accounting course in college, became the default money guy.
He also had a good palate for coffee and fell easily into the job of tasting and buying. Siegl liked tea and took on that department. Baldwin recalled, "One of the interesting things is how we accidently chose others with complementary skills. There was little overlap in skill set and I think that makes a huge difference" Baldwin interview.
In its first years, Starbucks looked nothing like the espresso bars serving food and beverages that now bear its name. The store sold bulk coffee beans, tea, and spices. That -- along with a selection of coffee makers, grinders, and teapots -- was it. The only brewed coffee was given away as samples. Siegl explained: "We would use coffee as a way to get people who came in the door to engage with us.
We would scoop some coffee, put it under their nose It worked. Word of mouth spread. With his background in journalism and advertising, Bowker knew how to get the attention of reporters. He sent a seductively aromatic package of coffee to influential Seattle Times columnist Don Duncan, who stopped by the store, got thoroughly caffeinated on free samples, and wrote an enthusiastic story.
One busy Saturday, the weekly shipment of roasted beans didn't arrive on schedule from Peet's. One recollection has it that the truck got delayed in a snowstorm. Others maintain that Peet hadn't been paid and held back the shipment. Either way, rather than disappoint customers, the owners took orders from everyone who came in. The next week, when the coffee arrived, they all jumped in their cars and delivered one-pound bags around the city.
After expenses, there wasn't much left. Still, by the following year, the partners, with Baldwin now on staff, were moving to open a second store. They found an excellent location at the University Village shopping center, near gourmet supermarket QFC. Broke, they had to solicit money from friends to get the new store up and running. Alfred Peet notified them that they needed to start roasting their own coffee beans.
He helped them locate a used machine and taught Baldwin how to achieve the distinctive dark roast that Starbucks was known for. The company rented a funky warehouse near Fishermen's Terminal to serve as a roasting plant. With business expanding, the owners needed help and Starbucks made two instrumental hires. The first, in , was Jean Mach.
She quickly progressed from store employee to store manager and then to wholesale sales director, responsible for developing Starbucks's restaurant business. Mach wrote the first employee manual, personally testing and describing the operation of each piece of equipment the stores sold. The next major hire was Jim Reynolds, a longtime coffee aficianado, who came onboard in July as coffee roaster. With the University Village store open, a third store was planned for Edmonds , north of Seattle.
Reynolds built shelving and coffee bins; Mach sanded and stained the floor; Baldwin did the electrical work. With Siegl's urging, this store featured a line of gourmet cookware aimed at expanding the business. It was a time when everything seemed possible for the young company and the future looked rosy. That illusion came crashing down in , when an extraordinary freeze devastated the Brazilian coffee crop. Coffee prices spiked.
As prices rose, sales declined. Starbucks quit offering free samples of brewed coffee. For a while Starbucks supplemented its income by roasting barley for another company that sold it as a coffee substitute. It was tricky, unpleasant work for Reynolds, with the barley often bursting into flames. Eventually Baldwin gave up that deal. And topping off the bad news, the Surgeon General issued a warning that coffee drinking might increase the risk of cancer.
By Starbucks was struggling to stay afloat. Edmonds had proven a disappointing location and the cookware line was not moving. Mach, the store manager, took to buying pots and pans herself, just to boost sales. Starbucks sold the lease and opened a new store in Bellevue. Then, more bad news: The building that housed their original store was to be torn down. The company's flagship would have to move. That's where the store still operates -- with tourists shooting selfies in front of the so-called "original" Starbucks.
Still the partners remained "cautiously optimistic," as Bowker wrote in the company's annual report, beginning "Fellow Capitalists: Another year of growth and change, progress and uncertainty, toil and sorrow, tears and laughter has passed since we last spoke corporately with you" annual report, August 12, Bowker invited shareholders of the private company to their annual meeting, to be held "aboard the Washington State ferry Hyak , Walla Walla , Yakima , or whichever vessel departs Seattle for Bremerton at p.
The cost of coffee beans began to drop, and Starbucks was finally able to lower retail prices. In May, anticipating rising demand, Baldwin traveled to Germany to buy a larger coffee roaster and visit suppliers. While he was away, he turned over coffee buying to Reynolds, and when he returned, never resumed the duty.
He remembered being embarrassed when suppliers told him the company hadn't been paying its bills. But business was picking up and in Starbucks moved its roasting plant and offices to a 6,square-foot facility at Airport Way. Throughout that period, Siegl had been coming up with ideas to expand and diversify the business.
Starbucks started a subsidiary called Pike Place Teas, imported commercial coffee grinders, and developed a grocery-store brand called Blue Anchor. To accommodate the new ventures, the company reorganized, with Siegl supervising the roasting plant. Reynolds was coffee buyer, head roaster, and plant manager; Linda Grossman, retail-merchandising manager; and Steve Ramsey the new plant-operations manager. Mach was promoted to vice president, sales. Baldwin narrowed his focus to planning and financial management.
But as time went by, the adjunct businesses didn't pay off. The Great Recession played its part, but Starbucks had also lost its own way, a fact nobody admitted more readily than Schultz himself. Walk into a Starbucks today, and you may not notice much connection going on: some customers come in chatty groups, but many others arrive in search of nothing more than a place to open their laptops and get some work done; in effect, using Starbucks not as a third but a second place — their workplace.
Most simply grab their coffee and go, never pausing to avail themselves of the chairs and couches provided, while others prefer to keep human interaction to an absolute minimum by using the drive-through window, a resoundingly un-urban feature Starbucks introduced in Still, when Starbucks moved beyond its little original store and wove itself into the fabric of American cities, it primed the public for subsequent waves of more genuinely local coffee shops that really do function as third places.
Someone pulled out an old mining map of the Cascade Range and saw a mining town named "Starbo", which immediately put Bowker in mind of the character "Starbuck". Bowker said, "Moby-Dick didn't have anything to do with Starbucks directly; it was only coincidental that the sound seemed to make sense. The Starbucks store at Pike Place. This is the second location of the original Starbucks, which was at Western Avenue from to The first Starbucks store was located in Seattle at Western Avenue from —
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