How Starbucks Built a Company One Cup at a Time

Pour Your Heart Into It

How Starbucks Built a Company One Cup at a Time

Recommendation

This book tells the story of Starbucks’ meteoric rise- how a few stores in Seattle grew into more than 1,600 stores worldwide.

Starbucks built its brand by putting people, both employees and customers, first and by emphasizing product quality over marketing.

Starbucks founder Howard Schultz and reporter Dori Jones Yang have written a fascinating, inspiring, and highly readable book.

It emphasizes business wisdom over business tips.

Schultz focuses on stories that show how enthusiasm, romance, and passion can get the job done. He also talks about he turned a small business into a ubiquitous business that opens a new store almost every day – clearly one of the most amazing business stories in recent years.

In this summary, you will learn

· What attributes Starbucks founder Howard Schultz considers essential to success;

· Why, to survive in today’s marketplace, companies must represent authenticity; and

· How to get to the top and retain your place there.

Take-Aways

· Develop a close relationship with your customers through the quality of your product and your customer service.

· If you want your employees to work harder and better, work harder to treat them better.

· Reinvent yourself and your product, even when you are experiencing success.

· When you start a business, be sure to instill your values, tone and beliefs.

· Get to know your product inside and out.

· You can build a business that is both successful and humane.

· To ensure growth, invest beyond your needs in terms of executives, manufacturing facilities, and the general infrastructure of your company.

· Take the road less traveled. Defying the conventional wisdom doled out in business schools or textbooks can make all the difference.

· Share the rewards of the company with your employees.

· Sometimes, when everything is failing, you have to lead with your heart; sometimes, you have to lead with your heart before anything is failing.

Summary

Vision and Process

Today’s over-saturated market has just too many products and not enough consumer money.

Therefore, it is important to stand for something authentic. It is also crucial to continually refresh and re-imagine your product.

Don’t be afraid to follow your vision.

Visions, dreams, passion: These things can’t be measured, and they certainly can’t be taught. They will give your business and your brand the essential uniqueness and integrity needed to stand out in a field that swallows up/ absorbs sameness.

At the same time, make sure you are building the type of infrastructure that will allow your vision to become a lasting/ strong reality.

If you are a visionary, seek out disciplined system builders.

Without them, you will run out of materials; and without you, they will merely/simply jog in place.

“Dream big, lay your foundations well, absorb information like a sponge and don’t be afraid to defy conventional wisdom.”

If you’re going to grow beyond the size and scope of your competitors, you have to be able to imagine places that no business has ever been before. But, it is not enough to simply imagine. Coffee had never been in a Frappuccino before Howard Schultz imagined it, and then put it there.

This is just one example of the desirable offspring of the marriage of vision and process.

Educate, Don’t Kowtow

A smart, sophisticated product might be just what customers crave/ thirst. Rather than giving them what they think they want, teach them about something new, invigorating, even romantic. If you dream for your customers, your product might become a part of their every day realities. Excellence or uniqueness can be forgotten quite easily in the tumult of the work week. Sometimes, you have to remind people that these things do exist.

“Vision is what they call it when others can’t see what you see.”

If you’re holding a latte at Starbucks right now, it’s because Schultz was willing to dream for you. He went to Italy and fell in love with the mystique of espressos and lattes. The excitement caught his imagination. He was willing to bet everything on the fact that it would captivate others.

He decided that he was going to educate people about their own tastes.

The success of Starbucks demonstrates that a niche market is often held back/restrain from expansion simply because not enough people know about it.

However, if a product is relevant, inspiring, and innovative, it’s like they say in the movie Field of Dreams: "If you build it, they will come."

Redefine Your Product

You can redefine your product without compromising its integrity. This is a tough line to walk. Starbucks refuses to take on a partner unless that partner is willing to commit to their ideals of excellence. When you make a deal with your customers, when you promise them a certain level of quality, you cannot back out of it. When United Airlines first started selling Starbucks coffee, it was not nearly as good as the Starbucks coffee that Starbucks sold. Customers noticed, and Starbucks took action. If your partner doesn’t understand your vision, they are not worth your time in the long-run.

Avoid Incrementalization

Building a big business requires teamwork. Building an even bigger business often requires bringing in specialists to head up departments. Sometimes, what is good for a specialist’s side of the business is not good for the business as a whole.

“If people in a company are upset about some issue but are not talking about it openly, the most productive approach for management is to bring up the subject directly.”

Lead With Your Heart

In the end, if you are trying to change something people have grown accustomed to, or if you are trying to build something that a large percentage of the population has never heard of, you have to lead with your heart. Changing minds is not an exact science.

In the 1960s, many large American coffee brands started to cut costs in order to be more competitive. The standard of canned coffee dropped drastically, and people learned to live with that mediocrity. Starbucks changed this. The three original partners knew in their hearts that they had to do it, and could do it, because they loved coffee.

“Many young companies can’t make the leap to maturity because they either don’t support the creative spirit with structure and process, or they go too far and stifle that spirit with an overdeveloped bureaucracy.”

Howard Schultz’s effort to bring Italian espresso drinks to people who usually only encountered them on the dessert menus at expensive restaurants parallels this development. Like the original three Starbucks partners, Schultz knew in his heart that he could do something. This drove him on through the highs and lows of building a company that didn’t just want to turn a profit, but wanted to change the face of culture in America.

The original Starbucks people didn’t want to hire Schultz at first. He spent a year convincing them that he would be a good fit. They didn’t want to serve coffee. They only wanted to sell beans. So Schultz broke away from the company he had begged his way into, started his own store, and eventually bought the Starbucks name. It didn’t seem like a wise business venture then. As Schultz says, "You could start up a neighborhood espresso bar and compete against us tomorrow, if you haven’t already."

If you are not inclined to start a business around a proprietary idea, you will have to reinvent an old commodity. If you love this commodity and are willing to throw your heart into it, you will stand a much better chance of attracting customers. They will buy your product because they will buy into your commitment. Investors, too, will buy into your commitment. They will invest in your passion, in the fact that the success of the business is something you take personally. Essentially, they will invest in you. Passion, commitment, heart: These are not the kinds of things you can learn in business school, and these are certainly not the kinds of things you can fake.

About the Authors

Howard Schultz has been Chairman and CEO of Starbucks since 1987. USA Today has called him the "Bill Gates of coffee." He lives in Seattle, Washington. Doris Jones Yang has worked as a reporter, writer, and bureau chief at BusinessWeek for fifteen years. She lives in Bellevue, Washington.