Pour Your Heart into It: How Starbucks Build a Company One Cup at a Time (14)

Title: Pour Your Heart into It: How Starbucks Build a Company One Cup at a Time
Author: Howard Schultz
Genre: Non-Fiction

This book is a fascinating look at the history of Starbucks through the eyes of its chairman, Howard Schultz. Though he didn't found the company he is the architect of the change from a company that roasted and sold coffee beans to the coffee shop behemoth it is now. He comes across as deeply and truly passionate to the company and the ideals he sees the company representing. As someone who really, really enjoys coffee and someone who goes Starbucks¹ on a semi-regular basis three anecdotes/statements from the book really stuck with me.

The first was the extreme internal debate over whether to start making espresso based drinks with non-fat milk. Though customers had been asking for it since almost the beginning Starbucks did not want to deliver the inferior drink and therefore inferior experience that they felt non-fat milk gives. They of course caved to customer demand on this point.

The second was the extreme internal debate over selling blended cold drinks. Store managers in the Los Angeles area saw that they were losing business to competitors who sold cold, coffee based blended brinks. Again Starbucks corporate did not want to dilute the Starbucks experience by offering such a thing and again they caved to customer demand and in-house entrepreneurial development. Interestingly enough the name Frappuccino was not a Starbucks invention. As of the time of the book's writing Starbucks had only once (I don't know if they've ever done it since) bought out a competitor. The competitor was a small chain of coffee houses in Boston and Frappuccino was the name of their blended coffee drink offering. Though what we know of now as Frappuccino isn't the same product as the original Boston drink Starbucks liked the name enough to recycle it.

Third is the statement by Shultz that Starbucks made a conscious decision to never sell cooked food in its stores because they didn't want the smell of food to displace the smell of coffee since coffee is what Starbucks is all about. Over and over in the book Shultz talks about how Starbucks isn't a restaurant, it's something different, yet in the last year Starbucks has become more like a restaurant with the introduction of the very gross looking, gross smelling and insanely unhealthy breakfast sandwiches. I was very disappointed when Starbucks introduced these because they really do take something away from the atmosphere at Starbucks. Clearly they've caved on this area which is interesting because I don't think the change was based on customer demand like the other two instances I've referenced. This seems clearly to be motivated by money/growth/strict competition/something else but not because it enhances the Starbucks experience or responds to needs/demands of customers.

All in all a very interesting book, particularly if you're interested in coffee, business, Starbucks, entrepreneurs, or any combination thereof.

^{1 Once we get settled back in Louisville I will, thankfully, have many local coffee houses to support so I suspect my visits to Starbucks will grow less and less.}