Starbucks almost got a different name. Told that words starting with ST sounded strong, the founders found an old Cascade mining town called Starbo on a map before settling on Starbuck, the first mate in Moby-Dick. Jerry Baldwin, Zev Siegl, and Gordon Bowker opened at Seattle’s Pike Place Market on March 30, 1971, selling only beans and equipment, and at first bought green beans from Alfred Peet. Howard Schultz joined in 1982, was inspired by Milan’s espresso bars, and left in 1985 to start Il Giornale when the founders refused to brew drinks. In 1987 they sold him the Starbucks chain.

Growth was fast: an IPO in 1992 with about $73.5 million in revenue, then the Frappuccino. In 2008 Schultz returned to close 600 US stores, and 73 percent of Australian stores shut in a market already served by Italian and Greek cafes. Mobile ordering reshaped stores into pickup hubs, and in April 2018 the arrest of two Black men waiting in a Philadelphia store led to racial bias training in 8,000 US locations. After COVID, unions spread from Buffalo in 2021, Laxman Narasimhan gave way to Brian Niccol in 2024, and in 2025 the menu shrank by 30 percent and the open door policy ended.

• By 2013 over 10 percent of in-store purchases were mobile, and Tweet a Coffee generated $180,000 in early purchases.
• In 2020 Starbucks planned to close 400 sit down stores and open 300 convenience formats like drive-thrus and pickup shops.
• Narasimhan had top executives work half day barista shifts every month.
• After exiting Russia in 2022, its 130 stores were rebranded as Stars Coffee with a similar mermaid logo.
• Starbucks buys about 3 percent of the world’s coffee and audits farms under C.A.F.E. Practices with 249 indicators.