Starbucks Corporation is an American coffee company and coffee chain based in Seattle, Washington. Starbucks is the largest coffeehouse company in the world ahead of UK rival Costa Coffee with 22,766 stores in 65 countries and territories, including 12, 802 in the United States, 1,930 in China, 1,409 in Canada, 1,121 in Japan and 825 in the United Kingdom.
Howard D. Schultz is best known as the Chairman and the Chief Executive Officer (CEO) of Starbucks. He went to Canarsie High School, from which he graduated in 1971. After graduating, Schultz worked as a salesperson, then he became a general manager for Swedish drip coffee maker manufacturer. A year later, he joined Starbucks as the Director of Marketing, because he was impressed with the Starbucks company’s knowledge of coffee.
From Starbucks’ founding in 1971 as a Seattle coffee bean roaster and retailer, the company has expanded rapidly. Between 1987 and 2007, Starbucks opened on average two new stores every day. Starbucks had been profitable as a local company in Seattle in the early 1980s but lost money on its late 1980s expansion into the Midwest and British Columbia. Its fortunes did not reverse until the fiscal year of 1989-1990 when it registered a small profit of $812,000. By the time it expanded into California in 1991 it had become trendy. The first store outside the United States or Canada opened in Tokyo in 1996 and overseas stores now constitute almost one third of Starbucks’ stores. The company planned to open a net of 900 new stores outside of the United States in 2009, but has announced 300 store closures in the United States since 2008.
Howard Schultz is a visionary leader who has had a tremendous impact on his employees and the global community. Under Schultz’s leadership, Starbucks has become the largest continual North American contributor to CARE, the international aid organization. CARE’s focus on sustainable development and emergency aid in developing countries helps Starbucks to give back to the coffee origin countries in which it does business.
In 1997, Howard Schultz created the Starbucks Foundation with the vision of using it as a tool to create dream and chance in communities where Starbucks does business. The foundation is currently focused on raising awareness for literacy causes and has generally acknowledged a program to authorize to organizations throughout North America to promote literacy.
Recently, Howard Schultz, who remains the Chairman of Starbucks, assumed a new role of chief global strategist in order to contribute more time to the company’s global expansion and international brand development.
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