2. History
The first Starbucks opened in Seattle, Washington, on March 31,
1971, by three partners who met while they were students at the
University of San Francisco: English teacher Jerry Baldwin,
history teacher Zev Siegl, and writer Gordon Bowker were inspired
to sell high-quality coffee beans and equipment by coffee roasting
entrepreneur Alfred Peet after he taught them his style of roasting
beans. The company took the name of the chief mate in the book
Moby-Dick: Starbuck, after considering "Cargo House" and
"Pequod". Bowker recalls that Terry Heckler, with whom Bowker
owned an advertising agency, thought words beginning with "st"
were powerful. The founders brainstormed a list of words
beginning with "st". 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."
3. Expansion to new markets and
products
The first Starbucks location outside North America opened in Tokyo,
Japan, in 1996. Starbucks entered the U.K. market in 1998 with the
$83 million USD acquisition of the then 56-outlet, UK-based Seattle
Coffee Company, re-branding all the stores as Starbucks. In September
2002, Starbucks opened its first store in Latin America, at Mexico City.
Currently, there are over 500 locations in Mexico and there are plans
for the opening of up to 850 by 2018.
In 1999, Starbucks experimented with eateries in the San Francisco
Bay area through a restaurant chain called Circadia. These
restaurants were soon "outed" as Starbucks establishments and
converted to Starbucks cafes.
In October 2002, Starbucks established a coffee trading company
in Lausanne, Switzerland to handle purchases of green coffee. All
other coffee-related business continued to be managed from Seattle.
4. PRODUCTS
In 1994, Starbucks bought The Coffee Connection, gaining the rights to use,
make, market, and sell the "Frappuccino" beverage. The beverage was
introduced under the Starbucks name in 1995 and as of 2012, Starbucks had
annual Frappuccino's sales of over $2 billion.
The company began a "skinny" line of drinks in 2008, offering lower-calorie and
sugar-free versions of the company's offered drinks that use skim milk, and can
be sweetened by a choice of "natural" sweeteners (such as raw sugar, agave
syrup, or honey), artificial sweeteners (such as Sweets' Low, Splenda, Equal), or
one of the company's sugar-free syrup flavors.
Starbucks introduced a new line of instant coffee packets, called VIA "Ready
Brew", in March 2009. It was first unveiled in New York City with subsequent
testing of the product also in Seattle, Chicago, and London
5. TEA
Starbucks entered the tea business in 1999 when it acquired
the Tazo brand for US$8,100,000. In late 2012, Starbucks paid
US$620 million to buy Teavana. As of November 2012, there is no
intention of marketing Starbucks' products in Teavana stores,
though the acquisition will allow the expansion of Teavana beyond
its current main footprint in shopping malls. In January 2015,
Starbucks began to roll out Teavana teas into Starbucks stores,
both in to-go beverage and retail formats.
6. LIMITED EDITIONS
Limited editions of a product contributed to refresh the brand
image through innovation and customer loyalty while offering a
new option to consumers.
The new Starbucks drink showed a packaging inspired by the
popularity of food on the Internet with the theme of unicorns and
christened it 'Frappuccino Unicorn’.
Under the concept of 'nightlife' J & B launched its limited-edition
packaging 'Crazy Colors'.
