Starbucks Coffee History
All these years, I’ve been stopping off at my local I’ve wondered what the heck is all about? Who started Starbucks. So I did a little research.
Three academic types English teacher Jerry Baldwin, writer Gordon Bowker and history teacher Zev Siegel started the first shop in the Pike Place Market in Seattle in 1971. They bought their beans from Alfred Peet of Peets fame before they branched out to buy from the growers directly. They were dedicated to buying the best possible coffee bean and bought green beans and roasted them. Then 11 year later along came Howard Schulz who after a trip to Italy told the founders they should sell coffee and espresso as well as beans. Schultz left to form the Il Giornale coffee chain and the founders bought out Peets. Then they sold Starbucks to Schultz and he changed the whole thing to Starbucks and the chain began from there! |
Apparently there were three co – founders, none of which was the well known face of the present day company. So it wasn’t like Mike Dell of Dell Computers, Bill Gates of Microsoft or Steve Jobbs of Apple.