Starbucks is perhaps the world’s most famous coffee chain shop. Additionally, Starbucks Corp. deals with trading of coffee beans. The business concern was established relatively recently, in 1971, and started the path as a chain of stores, which offer coffee. The primary emporium was opened on March 30, 1971. Three founders: Jerry Baldwin, Zev Siegl and Gordon Bowker gave a push to their first store in Pike Place Market in Seattle. For a long time shop was not only the first but also the only one. But several years later there were five Starbucks stores, supplementary the firm had its factory. The company was also a supplier of coffee beans to numerous coffee shops, bars and restaurants.
Zev Siegl left the trade in 1980. However, meantime, Starbucks was already the largest chain store in Washington with six retail places. 1987 –was the year of the turning point in the history of Starbucks, Howard Schultz became the head of the company, who made Starbucks as we know it today. Schultz worked for Starbucks for several years in the sphere of retail sales and marketing. Then he left the company and started his own business. Soon Schultz started to rule the coffee chain shop, Il Giornale. But in 1987 he returned and found investors to purchase the company. Buying Starbucks, he gives it the unusual name and unites two related activities into one company. Such an alliance was extraordinarily successful and the coffee chain Starbucks under his leadership managed to conquer the world. Today, Starbucks is not just coffee, coffee drinks, desserts and snacks. It is also engaged in related businesses, such as books, cinema, music, there is even a special division of Starbucks — Starbucks Entertainment, which is developing an entertainment area within the company.
There are about 18 000 facilities, which functioning in more than half a thousand countries. The headquarters of the company is still situated in Seattle, Washington. The history of Starbucks displays how the small coffee shops of local importance, which merely engaged in offering coffee beans, became an international Corporation with stores and offices in more than nine thousand cities in 34 countries, serving about 20 million customers per week.
