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Starbucks Corporation

(NASDAQ (GS):SBUX)
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Income Statement
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Contact Information
Starbucks Corporation
2401 Utah Ave. South
Seattle, WA 98134
WA Tel. 206-447-1575
Toll Free 800-782-7282
Fax 206-447-0828

Type: Public
On the web: http://www.starbucks.com
Employees: 172,000
Employee growth: 18.0%

Wake up and smell the coffee -- Starbucks is everywhere. The world's #1 specialty coffee retailer, Starbucks has more than 16,000 coffee shops in more than 35 countries. The outlets offer coffee drinks and food items, as well as roasted beans, coffee accessories, and teas. Starbucks owns more than 8,500 of its shops, which are located in about 10 countries (mostly in the US), while licensees and franchisees operate more than 6,500 units worldwide (primarily in shopping centers and airports). The company also owns the Seattle's Best Coffee and Torrefazione Italia coffee brands. In addition, Starbucks markets its coffee through grocery stores and licenses its brand for other food and beverage products.

Key numbers for fiscal year ending September, 2007:
Sales: $9,411.5M
One year growth: 20.9%
Net income: $672.6M
Income growth: 19.2%

Officers:
Chairman, President, and CEO: Howard D. Schultz
SVP Real Estate and Store Development, Starbucks Coffee International: Mark Wesley
VP Content Development: Alan Mintz

Competitors:
Dunkin
McDonald's
Nestlé

 
 
Stock Quote: Starbucks
 
Stock Chart: Starbucks
 
Company News: Starbucks
 
Company History: Starbucks Corporation

Incorporated: 1985 as Il Giornale
NAIC: 722213 Snack and Nonalcoholic Beverage Bars; 311920 Coffee and Tea Manufacturing; 311520 Ice Cream and Frozen Dessert Manufacturing; 312111 Soft Drink Manufacturing; 422490 Other Grocery and Related Products Wholesalers; 454110 Electronic Shopping and Mail-Order Houses; 533110 Lessors of Nonfinancial Intangible Assets (Except Copyrighted Works)
SIC: 2095 Roasted Coffee; 2024 Ice Cream & Frozen Desserts; 2086 Bottled & Canned Soft Drinks; 6792 Oil Royalty Traders; 6794 Patent Owners & Lessors

Starbucks Corporation is the leading roaster, retailer, and marketer of specialty coffee in the world. Its operations include upwards of 7,300 coffee shops and kiosks in the United States, and nearly 3,000 in 34 other countries, with the largest numbers located in Japan, Canada, the United Kingdom, China, Taiwan, South Korea, the Philippines, Thailand, Malaysia, Mexico, Australia, Germany, and New Zealand. In addition to a variety of coffees and coffee drinks, Starbucks shops also feature Tazo teas; pastries and other food items; espresso machines, coffee brewers, and other coffee- and tea-related items; and music CDs. The company also sells many of these products via mail-order and online at starbucks.com. It also wholesales its coffee to restaurants, businesses, education and healthcare institutions, hotels, and airlines. Through a joint venture with Pepsi-Cola Company, Starbucks bottles Frappuccino beverages and the Starbucks DoubleShot espresso drink and sells them through supermarkets and convenience and drugstores. Through a partnership with Kraft Foods, Inc., the company sells Starbucks whole bean and ground coffee into grocery, warehouse club, and mass merchandise stores. A third joint venture, with Dreyer's Grand Ice Cream, Inc., develops superpremium coffee ice creams and distributes them to U.S. supermarkets. From a single small store that opened in 1971 to its status as a 21st-century gourmet coffee giant, Starbucks has led a coffee revolution in the United States and beyond.

Roots in Coffee Retailing and Wholesaling

Starbucks was founded in Seattle, Washington, a haven for coffee aficionados. The city was noted for its coffee before World War II, but the quality of its coffee had declined so much by the late 1960s that resident Gordon Bowker made pilgrimages to Vancouver, British Columbia, to buy his beans there. His point of reference for the beverage was dark, delicious coffee he had discovered in Italy. Soon Bowker, then a writer for Seattle magazine, was making runs for friends as well. When Seattle folded, two of Bowker's friends, Jerry Baldwin, an English teacher, and Zev Siegl, a history teacher, also happened to be seeking new ventures; the three banded together and literally built their first store, located in Seattle's Pike Place Market, by hand. They raised $1,350 apiece, borrowed another $5,000, picked the name Starbucks, for the punchy "st" sound and its reference to the coffee-loving first mate in Moby Dick, then designed a two-tailed siren for a logo and set out to learn about coffee.

Siegl went to Berkeley, California, to learn from a Dutchman, Alfred Peet, who ran Peet's Coffee, which had been a legend among local coffee drinkers since 1966. Peet's approach to coffee beans became the cornerstone for Starbucks' reputation: high-grade arabica beans, roasted to a dark extreme by a trained perfectionist roaster. Starbucks bought its coffee from Peet's for its first nine months, giving away cups of coffee to hook customers. The plan worked. By 1972 the three founders had opened a second store in University Village and invested in a Probat roaster. Baldwin became the young company's first roaster.

Within its first decade, Starbucks had opened stores in Bellevue, Capitol Hill, and University Way. By 1982 the original entrepreneurs had a solid retail business of five stores, a small roasting facility, and a wholesale business that sold coffee primarily to local restaurants. The first of the company's growth-versus-ethos challenges came at this stage: how does one maintain a near fanatical dedication to freshness in wholesale? Starbucks insisted that the shelf life of coffee is less than 14 days after roasting. As a result, they donated all eight-day-old coffee to charity.

In 1982 Starbucks hired Howard Schultz to manage the company's retail sales and marketing. While vice-president of U.S. operations for Hammarplast, a Swedish housewares company, and working out of New York, Schultz met the Starbucks trio and considered their coffee a revelation. (He had grown up on instant.) He and his wife packed up and drove 3,000 miles west to Seattle to join Starbucks.

There were other changes taking place at Starbucks at the same time. Siegl had decided to leave in 1980. The name of the wholesale division was changed to Caravali, out of fear of sullying the Starbucks name with less than absolute freshness. Blue Anchor, a line of whole-bean coffees being prepackaged for supermarkets, was relinquished. Starbucks learned two lessons from their brief time in business with supermarkets: first, supermarkets and their narrow profit margins were not the best outlet for a coffee roaster who refused to compromise on quality in order to lower prices, and second, Starbucks needed to sell directly to consumers who were educated enough to know why the coffee they were buying was superior.

Mid-1980s: The Shift to Coffee Bars

In 1983 Starbucks bought Peet's Coffee, which had by then become a five-store operation itself. That same year, Schultz took a buying trip to Italy, where another coffee revelation took place. Wandering the piazzas of Milan, Schultz was captivated by the culture of coffee and the romance of Italian coffee bars. Milan had about 1,700 espresso bars, which were a third center for Italians, after work and home. Schultz returned home determined to bring Italian coffee bars to the United States, but found his bosses reluctant, being still more dedicated to retailing coffee. As a result, Schultz left the company to write a business plan of his own. His parting with Starbucks was so amicable that the founders invested in Schultz's vision. Schultz returned to Italy to do research, visiting hundreds of espresso and coffee bars.

In the spring of 1986, he opened his first coffee bar in the Columbia Seafirst Center, the tallest building west of Chicago. Faithful to its inspiration, the bar had a stately espresso machine as its centerpiece. Called Il Giornale, the bar served Starbucks coffee and was an instant hit. A second was soon opened in Seattle, and a third in Vancouver. Schultz hired Dave Olsen, the proprietor of one of the first bohemian espresso bars in Seattle, as a coffee consultant and employee trainer.

A year later, Schultz was thriving while Starbucks was encountering frustration. The wholesale market had been reconfigured by the popularity of flavored coffees, which Starbucks resolutely refused to produce. The company's managers were also increasingly aggravated by the lack of wholesale quality control, so they sold their wholesale line, Caravali, to Seattle businessman Bart Wilson and a group of investors. In addition, Bowker was interested in leaving the company to concentrate on a new project, Red Hook Ale. Schultz approached his old colleagues with an attractive offer: how about $4 million for the six-unit Starbucks chain? They sold, with Olsen remaining as Starbucks' coffee buyer and roaster; the Starbucks stores were merged into Il Giornale. Baldwin remained president of the now separately operated Peet's Coffee and Tea. In 1987 the Il Giornale shops changed their names to Starbucks, and the company became Starbucks Corporation and prepared to go national.

In August 1987 Starbucks Corporation had 11 stores and fewer than 100 employees. In October of that year it opened its first store in Chicago, and by 1989 there were nine Chicago Starbucks, where employees trained by Seattle managers served coffee roasted in the Seattle plant.

Their methods were costly, using high-grade arabica beans and expensive dark roasting, while suffering the financial consequences of snubbing the supermarket and wholesale markets. Nevertheless, Starbucks' market was growing rapidly: sales of specialty coffee in the United States grew from $50 million in 1983 to $500 million five years later.

In 1988 Starbucks introduced a mail-order catalog, and by the end of that year, the company was serving mail-order customers in every state and operating a total of 33 stores. Because the company's reputation grew steadily by word of mouth, it spent little on ads. Schultz's management philosophy, "hire people smarter than you are and get out of their way," fed his aggressive expansion plans. Industry experts were brought in to manage Starbucks' finances, human resources, marketing, and mail-order divisions. The company's middle ranks were filled with experienced managers from such giants as Taco Bell, Wendy's, and Blockbuster. Schultz was willing to lose money while preparing Starbucks for explosive growth. By 1990 he had hired two star executives: Howard Behar, previously president of a leading developer of outdoor resorts, Thousand Trails, Inc.; and Orin Smith, chief financial and administrative officer for Danzas, USA, a freight forwarder.

Starbucks installed a costly computer network and hired a specialist in information technology from McDonald's Corporation to design a point-of-sale system via PCs for store managers to use. Every night, stores passed their sales information to Seattle headquarters, which allowed planners to spot regional buying trends almost instantly. Starbucks lost money while preparing for its planned expansion, including more than $1 million in 1989 alone. In 1990 the headquarters expanded and a new roasting plant was built. Nevertheless, Schultz resisted both the temptation to franchise and to flavor the beans. Slowly, the chain developed near-cult status.

Rapid Early 1990s Growth As a Public Company

Starbucks also developed a reputation for treating its employees well. In 1991 it became the first privately owned company in history to establish an employee stock option program that included part-timers. Starbucks also offered health and dental benefits to both full- and part-time employees. As a result, the company had a turnover rate that was very low for the food service industry. Employees were rigorously trained, completing at least 25 hours of coursework on topics including the history of coffee, drink preparation, and how to brew a perfect cup at home. The company went public in 1992, the same year it opened its first stores in San Francisco, San Diego, Orange County, and Denver. Its stores totaled 165 by year's end. The company began special relationships with Nordstrom, Inc. and Barnes & Noble, Inc., offering coffee to shoppers at both chains.

Growth mandated the opening of a second roasting plant, located in Kent, Washington, by 1993. After 22 years in business, Starbucks had only 19 individuals it deemed qualified to roast coffee. One of the 19 was Schultz, who considered it a tremendous privilege. Roasters were trained for more than a year before being allowed to roast a batch, which consisted of up to 600 pounds of coffee roasted for 12 to 15 minutes in a gas oven. The beans made a popping sound, like popcorn, when ready, but roasters also used sight and smell to tell when the beans were done to perfection. Starbucks standards required roasters to test the roasted beans in an Agron blood-cell analyzer to assure that each batch was up to standards. If not, it was discarded.

Starbucks' first East Coast store opened in 1993, in a premier location in Washington, D.C. The chain had 275 stores by the end of 1993 and 425 one year later. Sales had grown an average of 65 percent annually over the previous three years (reaching $284.9 million in 1994), with net income growing 70 to 100 percent a year during that time. Starbucks broke into important new markets in 1994, including Minneapolis, Boston, New York, Atlanta, Dallas, and Houston, and purchased the Coffee Connection, a 23-store rival based in Boston, for $23 million, making it a wholly owned subsidiary. Smith was promoted to president and COO and Behar became president, international. Starbucks also announced a partnership with Pepsi-Cola to develop new ready-to-drink coffee beverages. After Starbucks debuted a frozen coffee drink called Frappuccino in its stores in the summer of 1995, resulting in a sales bonanza, the partnership with Pepsi began rolling out a bottled version in grocery, convenience, and drugstores the following year. Starbucks broke into new markets in 1995, including Pittsburgh, San Antonio, Las Vegas, and Philadelphia. That same year, Starbucks began supplying coffee for United Airlines flights and launched a line of Starbucks compilation music CDs, which were sold in its coffeehouses.

Late 1990s: International Expansion and New Ventures

The following year, in addition to continued North American expansion into Rhode Island, Idaho, North Carolina, Arizona, Utah, and Ontario, the company ventured overseas for the first time. Its initial foreign forays were launched through joint venture and licensing arrangements with prominent local retailers. With the help of SAZABY Inc., a Japanese retailer and restaurateur, the first market developed in 1996 was Japan; through other partnerships, Hawaii and Singapore also received their first Starbucks that year. The Philippines followed in 1997. Meantime, Starbucks entered into a partnership with Dreyer's Grand Ice Cream, Inc. in 1996 to develop and sell Starbucks Ice Cream. Within eight months of introduction, the product became the number one coffee ice cream in the United States. Starbucks' expansion into Florida, Michigan, and Wisconsin in 1997 helped the total number of units reach an astounding 1,412 by year-end, more than double the previous two-year total. Sales approached the $1 billion mark that year, while net income hit $57.4 million, more than five times the result for 1994.

As this rapid growth continued, the company began to be needled by late night talk show hosts for its seeming Starbucks-on-every-corner expansion strategy, while a number of owners and patrons of local coffee shops began speaking out and demonstrating against what they considered overly aggressive and even predatory moves into new territory. Critics complained that the company was deliberately locating its units near local coffee merchants to siphon off sales, sometimes placing a Starbucks directly across the street. In 1996 and 1997 residents in Toronto, San Francisco, Brooklyn, and Portland, Oregon, staged sidewalk protests to attempt to keep Starbucks out of their neighborhoods. One of the company's responses to the scattered resistance was to try to enhance its image through stepped-up advertising. Still, like Wal-Mart Stores, Inc. and its reputation in some quarters as a destroyer of Main Street, Starbucks remained the object of snickers from comedians and derision from a vocal minority of protesters. This undercurrent of hostility burst into the spotlight in late 1999 when some of the more aggressive protesters against a World Trade Organization meeting took their anger out on several Starbucks stores in the company's hometown of Seattle, tagging a number of the 26 downtown locations with graffiti and inflicting more serious vandalism on three stores, which were then temporarily closed.

The anti-multinational protesters in Seattle also singled out stores operated by McDonald's Corporation and Nike, Inc. The lumping of the once modest purveyor of gourmet coffee in with these global giants was in part an outgrowth of the company's aggressive overseas expansion in the late 1990s. Growth in the Pacific Rim continued with the opening of locations in Taiwan, Thailand, New Zealand, and Malaysia in 1998 and in China and South Korea in 1999. By early 2000 the number of Starbucks in Japan had reached 100. The company aimed to have 500 stores in the Pacific Rim by 2003. The Middle East was another target of global growth, with stores opened in Kuwait and Lebanon in 1999, but it was the United Kingdom that was the object of the company's other big late 1990s push. In 1998 Starbucks acquired Seattle Coffee Company, the leading U.K. specialty coffee firm, for about $86 million in stock. Starbucks began rebranding Seattle Coffee's locations under the Starbucks name. Aggressive expansion in the United Kingdom yielded more than 100 units by late 1999. Starbucks hoped to use its U.K. base for an invasion of the Continent, aiming for 500 stores in Europe by 2003.

Growth was not slowing back home either. Areas receiving their first Starbucks in 1998 and 1999 included New Orleans, St. Louis, Kansas City, and Memphis and Nashville, Tennessee. The number of North American locations approached 2,200 by early 2000. Always searching for new revenue streams, Starbucks in 1998 entered into a long-term licensing agreement with Kraft Foods, Inc. for the marketing and distribution of Starbucks whole bean and ground coffee into grocery, warehouse club, and mass merchandise stores. The company also began experimenting with a full-service casual restaurant called Café Starbucks. A further move into food came in early 1999 through the purchase of Pasqua Coffee Co., a chain of coffee and sandwich shops with 56 units in California and New York. Starbucks had already developed its own in-house tea brand, Infusia, but it was replaced following the early 1999 acquisition of Tazo Tea Company, a Portland, Oregon-based maker of premium teas and related products with distribution through 5,000 retail outlets.

Starbucks had also launched a web site featuring an online store in 1998, and Schultz began talking about Starbucks becoming a mega-cybermerchant offering everything from gourmet foods to furniture. To this end, the company attempted, but failed, to acquire Williams-Sonoma, Inc., a specialty retailer of high-end kitchenware. Wall Street analysts began questioning the wisdom of moving so far afield from the company's core coffee business. In mid-1999, following Starbucks' announcement of an earnings shortfall, the company's stock plunged 28 percent, leading Schultz to pull back on his ambitious cyber plans.

Other developments included an agreement with Albertson's, Inc. to open more than 100 Starbucks coffee bars in Albertson's supermarkets in the United States; and the acquisition of the five-store San Francisco-based Hear Music chain, in an extension of Starbucks' music retailing ventures. Image problems continued to crop up for the rapidly growing company, whose 1999 revenues of $1.68 billion were nearly six times the figure of five years earlier. In April 2000 a San Francisco-based human rights group called Global Exchange was readying a large protest at Starbucks in 29 cities to publicize its allegations that the coffee company was buying its beans from wholesalers who were paying farmers what amounted to poverty wages. In a preemptive move, which staved off the protests and the resultant bad publicity, Starbucks announced that it would buy more coffee certified as "fair trade," meaning that the farmers who grew it received more than market price for their crop, sometimes as high as three times the 30 cents per pound they typically received.

Accelerating Growth in the Early 21st Century

In the early 21st century, Starbucks was working to achieve Schultz's ambitious goals of 500 stores in both Japan and Europe by 2003, as well as his ultimate goal of 20,000 units worldwide. With about half of that total envisioned to be located outside North America, Schultz decided to spend more time on the company's overseas operations. In June 2000 he stepped down as CEO of the company to become its chief global strategist, while remaining chairman. Schultz began working closely with Peter Maslen, who had taken charge of the international division in late 1999, following the retirement of Howard Behar. Assuming the CEO title was Orin Smith, who retained his previous responsibility for domestic retail and wholesale operations, alliances, and coffee roasting and distribution.

Starbucks' rate of expansion accelerated in the early 2000s: after opening about 1,200 new stores each year from 2001 to 2004, the company added nearly 1,700 new outlets in 2005, pushing the chain past the 10,000 unit mark. About 1,150 of the units opened in 2005 were located in the United States, bringing the domestic total to 7,300. Even this figure did not represent a saturated market, as Starbucks was now aiming to eventually have 15,000 stores in the U.S. market alone. It also expected to eventually increase its international outlets from the approximately 3,000 that were operating in late 2005 to 15,000. Starbucks debuted in continental Europe in 2001 when stores were opened in Switzerland and Austria, and further new territories were entered in each of the following years: Oman, Indonesia, Germany, Spain, Mexico, and Greece in 2002; Turkey, Chile, Peru, and Cyprus in 2003; Paris, France, in 2004; and Jordan in 2005. In addition, the Starbucks unit in Japan was taken public in 2001. During this same period, the company's revenues skyrocketed, surging from $2.17 billion in 2000 to $5.39 billion in 2005. Net earnings increased more than fivefold, from $94.6 million to $494.5 million.

Among the new initiatives during this period, the company in 2001 introduced the Starbucks Card, a stored-value card that customers could use and reload, and also began offering high-speed wireless Internet access at its stores. In 2002 the beverage line was extended to include the first noncoffee/nontea blended concoction, the Crème Frappuccino, a cold, creamy vanilla drink. The Starbucks Card in 2003 was extended into a combined credit and stored-value card. That same year, the company acquired Seattle Coffee Company from AFC Enterprises, Inc. for $72 million, thereby gaining the Seattle's Best Coffee and Torrefazione Italia coffee brands. Starbucks' music endeavors expanded in 2004 with the launch of the first Hear Music media bars at select Starbucks locations. These media bars enabled customers to burn unique compilation CDs from an initial selection of 200,000 songs. Also in 2004 the company entered into an agreement with Jim Beam Brands Co. to develop and market a superpremium coffee liqueur, and the following year Jim Beam began distributing Starbucks Coffee Liqueur to licensed establishments, not to Starbucks outlets. A further expansion of the outlets' beverage offerings came in 2005 when Chantico drinking chocolate debuted in the United States and Canada and the company acquired Ethos Water.

In March 2005 Smith retired as CEO and was succeeded by Jim Donald, who had been president of the firm's North America unit and had been hired away from Pathmark Stores, Inc. in 2002. Donald was a main force behind a drive to broaden Starbucks outlets beyond coffee--not only into music but also into food. Lunch items, typically sandwiches, began to be offered at many North American Starbucks, and testing of hot breakfasts, such as ham, egg, and cheese on a muffin, began in 2004. Rather than morphing into a restaurant chain, however, Schultz (who remained chairman) and Donald aimed to reshape Starbucks into a retailer with a broader array of products and services. At the same time, the global expansion continued toward the eventual goal of 30,000 outlets worldwide and with China potentially rivaling the United States as Starbucks' largest market. In 2006 alone, the company planned to open another 1,800 stores.

Principal Subsidiaries

Olympic Casualty Insurance Company; Seattle Coffee Company; Starbucks Capital Asset Leasing Company, LLC; Starbucks Coffee Company (Australia) Pty. Ltd.; Starbucks Coffee Canada, Inc.; Starbucks Coffee Holdings (UK) Limited; Seattle Coffee Company (International) Limited (U.K.); Starbucks Coffee Company (UK) Limited; Torz & Macatonia Limited (U.K.); Starbucks Coffee International, Inc.; Coffee Concepts (Southern China) Ltd. (Hong Kong); Coffee Concepts (Guangdong) Ltd. (China); Coffee Concepts (Shenzhen) Ltd. (China); Rain City C.V. (Netherlands); Emerald City C.V. (Netherlands); Starbucks Coffee EMEA B.V. (Netherlands); Starbucks Manufacturing EMEA B.V. (Netherlands); Starbucks Coffee (Deutschland) GmbH (Germany); Starbucks Coffee (Ireland) Limited; Starbucks Coffee Trading Company Sarl (Switzerland); Starbucks Coffee Agronomy Company S.R.L. (Costa Rica); Qingdao American Starbucks Coffee Company Limited (China); Starbucks Coffee (Dalian) Company Limited (China); Chengdu Starbucks Coffee Company Limited (China); Starbucks Card Europe, Limited (U.K.); Starbucks Coffee Asia Pacific Limited (Hong Kong); Starbucks Coffee Singapore Pte. Ltd.; Sur-Andino Café S.A. (Chile); Starbucks Coffee (Thailand) Ltd.; Starbucks Global Card Services, Inc.; Starbucks Manufacturing Corporation; Urban Coffee Opportunities, LLC.

Principal Competitors

Caribou Coffee Company, Inc.; Diedrich Coffee, Inc.; Dunkin' Brands, Inc.; Peet's Coffee & Tea, Inc.; Panera Bread Company; Cosi, Inc.; ABP Corporation; Tully's Coffee Corporation.

Further Reading

Abramovitch, Ingrid, "Miracles of Marketing: How to Reinvent Your Product," Success, April 1993, pp. 22-26.

Anders, George, "Starbucks in Pact with Kozmo.com on Using Stores," Wall Street Journal, February 14, 2000, p. A34.

Barron, Kelly, "The Cappuccino Conundrum," Forbes, February 22, 1999, p. 54.

Brammer, Rhonda, "Grounds for Caution," Barron's, August 15, 1994, p. 20.

Browder, Seanna, "Starbucks Does Not Live by Coffee Alone," Business Week, August 5, 1996, p. 76.

Cuneo, Alice, "Starbucks' Word-of-Mouth Wonder," Advertising Age, March 7, 1994, p. 12.

Daniels, Cora, "Mr. Coffee," Fortune, April 14, 2003, pp. 139-40.

Doherty, Jacqueline, "Make It Decaf," Barron's, May 20, 2002, pp. 20-21.

Ebenkamp, Becky, "This Java Joint Is Jumpin'," Brandweek, October 10, 2005, pp. M42-M45, M66.

Fitch, Stephane, "Latte Grande, Extra Froth," Forbes, March 19, 2001, p. 58.

Fitzpatrick, Eileen, "Starbucks Buy Hear Music Chain," Billboard, December 4, 1999, p. 10.

Frank, Stephen, "Starbucks Brews Strong Results Analysts Like," Wall Street Journal, July 14, 1994, p. C1.

Gibson, Richard, "Some Meatloaf with That Decaf Latte?," Wall Street Journal, March 16, 1999, p. B1.

------, "Starbucks Cyberspace Mission Returns to Earth After Big Bang on Wall Street," Wall Street Journal, July 23, 1999, p. B4.

------, "Starbucks Holders Wake Up, Smell the Coffee and Sell," Wall Street Journal, July 2, 1999, p. B3.

Gray, Steven, "Starbucks Brews Broader Menu," Wall Street Journal, February 9 2005, p. B9.

Gray, Steven, and Amy Merrick, "Latte Letdown: Starbucks Set to Raise Prices," Wall Street Journal, September 2, 2004, p. B1.

Gray, Steven, and Ethan Smith, "In Latest Music Move, Starbucks Will Blend Hot Java, CD Burning," Wall Street Journal, October 14, 2004, p. D1.

------, "New Grind: At Starbucks, a Blend of Coffee and Music Creates a Potent Mix," Wall Street Journal, July 19, 2005, p. A1.

Hamstra, Mark, "Starbucks' Pasqua Purchase Dovetails with Food-Caf Tests," Nation's Restaurant News, January 4, 1999, pp. 3, 104.

Harris, John, "Cuppa Sumatra," Forbes, November 26, 1990, pp. 213-14.

Holmes, Stanley, "First the Music, Then the Coffee," Business Week, November 22, 2004, p. 66.

------, "Strong Lattes, Sour Notes," Business Week, June 20, 2005, pp. 58, 60.

Holmes, Stanley, Drake Bennett, Kate Carlisle, and Chester Dawson, "Planet Starbucks: To Keep Up the Growth, It Must Go Global Quickly," Business Week, September 9, 2002, pp. 100-05+.

Holmes, Stanley, Irene M. Kunii, Jack Ewing, and Kerry Capell, "For Starbucks, There's No Place Like Home," Business Week, June 9, 2003, p. 48.

Jones Yang, Dori, "The Starbucks Enterprise Shifts into Warp Speed," Business Week, October 24, 1994, pp. 76-78.

Kaplan, David A., "Trouble Brewing," Newsweek, July 19, 1999, pp. 40-41.

Kim, Nancy J., "Starbucks Weighing European Growth Strategies," Puget Sound Business Journal, August 20, 1999, p. 9.

Kugiya, Hugo, "Seattle's Coffee King," Seattle Times, December 15, 1996, p. 20.

Leung, Shirley, "Starbucks May Indeed Be a Robust Staple," Wall Street Journal, July 26, 2002, p. B4.

Meyers, William, "Conscience in a Cup of Coffee," U.S. News and World Report, October 31, 2005, p. 48.

Ordonez, Jennifer, "Starbucks' Schultz to Leave Top Post, Lead Global Effort," Wall Street Journal, April 7, 2000, p. B3.

Pressler, Margaret Webb, "The Brain Behind the Beans," Washington Post, October 5, 1997, p. H1.

Reese, Jennifer, "Starbucks: Inside the Coffee Cult," Fortune, December 9, 1996, pp. 190-92+.

Robinson, Kathryn, "Coffee Achievers," Seattle Weekly, August 2, 1989.

Schultz, Howard, "By Way of Canarsie, One Large Hot Cup of Business Strategy," New York Times, December 14, 1994, pp. C1, C8.

Schultz, Howard, and Dori Jones Yang, Pour Your Heart into It: How Starbucks Built a Company One Cut at a Time, New York: Hyperion, 1997, 351 p.

Schwartz, Nelson D., "Still Perking After All These Years," Fortune, May 24, 1999, pp. 203+.

Serwer, Andy, "Starbucks to Go," Fortune, January 26, 2004, pp. 60-64+.

Simons, John, "A Case of the Shakes: As Starbucks Cafes Multiply, So Do the Growing Pains," U.S. News and World Report, July 14, 1997, pp. 42-44.

Spector, Amy, "Starbucks Launches Lunch Tests in Seven Major Markets," Nation's Restaurant News, October 18, 1999, p. 32.

Strauss, Karyn, "Howard Schultz," Nation's Restaurant News, January 2000, pp. 162-63.

Theodore, Sarah, "Expanding the Coffee Experience," Beverage Industry, October 2002, pp. 57, 60-62.

Weiss, Naomi, "How Starbucks Impassions Workers to Drive Growth," Workforce, August 1998.

Whalen, Jeanne, "Starbucks, Pepsi Tackle Coffee Venture," Advertising Age, August 1, 1994, p. 44.

— Carol I. Keeley; Updated by David E. Salamie


 

(established 1971)

This American chain of coffee houses, with its distinctive logo, has become a recognized brand in countless major towns and cities throughout the world, with innumerable smaller outlets located in bookshops, hotels, airports, stations, and sports and leisure centres. Based on the concept of a comfortable living room combined with coffee shop, the brand has also developed its commercial potential to embrace a wide range of other products, whether closely related—such as own-brand coffee-beans, biscuits, and ice cream—or more generic lifestyle commodities such as music. The company's distinctive logo was designed by Seattle-based Heckler Associates in 1971 and underwent three changes between then and its more definitive 1990 version. Although based on the image of a mythical siren, due to the company founders' interest in the sea, the increasingly simplified image has made a global impact. The first Japanese Starbucks outlets opened in 1996 and, by the early 21st century, had outlets in more than 30 countries including China. The expansion in Japan was dramatic, opening its first store in the Ginza district of Tokyo in August 1996 and its 400th in Okinawa in 2002. The success of the Starbucks lifestyle concept, accompanied by rapid growth and high levels of profitability, has been such that it has also given rise to a number of imitators. The first Starbucks location opened in the United States, in Pike Place, Seattle in 1971 and the company expanded globally with a brand recognition that has been compared to the longer standing, brand-distinctive McDonald's fast-food empire. However, in its early years the company's activities were mainly concerned with the marketing of coffee to expresso bars and restaurants and it was not until 1983, when its marketing director Howard Schultz travelled to Italy, that the idea of developing a coffee bar culture began to take off. Starbuck's achievements have been such that, in 2003, it was considered by Fortune, the leading American business magazine, to be one of its ten most admired companies. However, like many other American global brands, it also attracted criticism but sought to counter this through its profiling of progressive employment practices, including the offer of share options to part-time staff, and a commitment to ecological and environmentally-friendly policies.

 
Wikipedia: Starbucks
Starbucks Corporation
Type Public (NASDAQSBUX,SEHK: 4337)
Founded In 1971 across from Pike Place Market in Seattle, Washington
Headquarters Seattle, Washington, USA
Key people Howard Schultz, Chairman
Jim Donald, President & CEO
James C. Alling, President, Starbucks U.S.
Martin Coles, President, Starbucks International
Michael Casey, Chief Financial Officer
Industry Restaurants
Retail Coffee & Tea
Retail Beverages
Entertainment
Products Whole Bean Coffee
Boxed Tea
Made-to-order beverages
Bottled beverages
Baked Goods
Merchandise
Frappuccino beverages
Revenue Green_Arrow_Up_Darker.svg $7.786 billion USD (2006)
Employees 147,436
Subsidiaries Starbucks Coffee Company
Tazo Tea Company
Seattle's Best Coffee
Torrefazione Italia
Hear Music
Ethos Water
Website Starbucks.com

Starbucks Corporation (NASDAQ: SBUX; SEHK: 4337) is a coffeehouse chain based in the United States. Named after the first mate in the novel Moby-Dick, Starbucks is the largest coffeehouse company in the world[1], with 7,521 company-owned and 5,647 licensed stores in 40 countries, making a total of 13,168 stores worldwide.[2] Starbucks serves drip brewed coffee, espresso-based hot drinks, other hot and cold drinks, snacks and items such as mugs and coffee beans. Through its Starbucks Entertainment division and Hear Music brand, the company has ventured beyond refreshments into books, music, and film. Many of these products are seasonal or specific to the locality of the store. Starbucks brand ice cream and coffee are also sold at grocery stores.

From its founding in Seattle, Washington, as a local coffee bean roaster and retailer, Starbucks has expanded rapidly. In the 1990s, the company was opening a new store every workday, a pace that continued into the 2000s. Domestic growth has since slowed down, though the company continues to expand in foreign markets and is opening 7 stores a day worldwide. The first international location outside of the U.S. and Canada was established in 1996, and they now constitute almost one third of Starbucks' stores.[3]

As of February 2007, Starbucks had 7,521 company-owned outlets worldwide: 6,010 of them in the United States and 1,511 in other countries and U.S. territories. In addition, the company has 5,647 joint-venture and licensed outlets, 3,391 of them in the United States and 2,256 in other countries and U.S. territories. This brings the total locations (as of February 2007) to 13,168 worldwide.[2] Starbucks can be found in many popular grocery chains in the U.S. and Canada, as well as in many airports.

Starbucks' corporate headquarters are in Seattle, Washington, United States. As of March 2007, the members of the company's board of directors are Howard Schultz (Chair), Jim Donald, Barbara Bass, Howard Behar, Bill Bradley, Mellody Hobson, Olden Lee, James Shennan, Jr., Javier Teruel, Myron Ullman, III, and Craig Weatherup.

History

The original Starbucks opened in Seattle, Washington, in 1971 by three partners: English teacher Jerry Baldwin, history teacher Kristina Taplin, and writer Gordon Bowker. The three were inspired by Alfred Peet, whom they knew personally, to open their first store in Pike Place Market to sell high-quality coffee beans and equipment. The original Starbucks location was at 2000 Western Avenue from 1971-1976. That store then moved to 1912 Pike Place; it is still open. During their first year of operation, they purchased green coffee beans from Peet's, then began buying directly from growers.

A Starbucks coffee shop in Leeds, United Kingdom
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A Starbucks coffee shop in Leeds, United Kingdom

Entrepreneur Howard Schultz joined the company in 1982, and, after a trip to Milan, advised that the company sell coffee and espresso drinks as well as beans. The owners rejected this idea, believing that getting into the beverage business would distract the company from its primary focus. To them, coffee was something to be prepared in the home. Certain that there was much money to be made selling drinks to on-the-go Americans, Schultz started the Il Giornale coffee bar chain in 1985.

In 1984, the original owners of Starbucks, led by Baldwin, took the opportunity to purchase Peet's (Baldwin still works there today). In 1987, they sold the Starbucks chain to Schultz's Il Giornale, which rebranded the El Giornale outlets as Starbucks and quickly began to expand. Starbucks opened its first locations outside Seattle in Vancouver (which now has more locations than anywhere in the world)[citation needed], British Columbia, Canada (at Waterfront Station) and Chicago, Illinois, United States that same year. At the time of its initial public offering on the stock market in 1992, Starbucks had grown to 165 outlets.

Schultz hired Anna Niess and Will Chassaing to completely redesign the stores in 1995, who created the Synergistic Rollout Program that built one store per day, saving Starbucks US$20 million a year. Massey also established the Creative Services Group which produced the brand identity and the store design through a brand story. In the book "Pour Your Heart into It", Schultz stated: "Wright's goal was to raise our store design to a higher level, leaping ahead of our competitors. He aimed to create a lyrical and aesthetic new design, with richness and texture, strong enough to tell the Starbucks story, going beyond just a revised new color scheme, another kind of wood, or a new style of chairs, and trying to capture the essence of the Starbucks experience. He directed his creative team to draw from culture and mythology to weave a fantastic tale."

Starbucks created a visual brand language that was recognizable and distinctive, the way Coca-Cola maintained the color red, the Spencerian script, and the green bottle for over 100 years. The visual brand language consisted of icons, stories, and color palettes that convey the look and feel of Starbucks graphics.

The first Starbucks location outside of North America opened in Tokyo in 1996. Starbucks entered the U.K. market in 1998 with the acquisition of the then 60-outlet Seattle Coffee Company, re-branding all its stores as Starbucks. By November 2005, London had more outlets than Manhattan,[4] a sign of Starbucks becoming an international brand.

Starbucks Headquarters, Seattle.
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Starbucks Headquarters, Seattle.

In April 2003, Starbucks completed the purchase of Seattle's Best Coffee and Torrefazione Italia from AFC Enterprises, bringing the total number of Starbucks-operated locations worldwide to more than 6,400. On September 14, 2006, rival Diedrich Coffee announced that it would sell most of its company-owned retail stores to Starbucks. This sale includes the company owned locations of the Oregon-based Coffee People chain. Starbucks representatives have been quoted as saying they will convert the Diedrich Coffee and Coffee People locations to Starbucks stores.[5][6]

Starbucks' chairman, Howard Schultz, has talked about the tension that exists in the company between their rapid expansion (they aim to eventually operate 40,000 retail stores worldwide)[7] and their collective desire to act like a small company.

Products

A Starbucks Venti Java Chip Frappuccino
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A Starbucks Venti Java Chip Frappuccino

Starbucks serves a variety of beverages including brewed coffee, espresso, teas, and Frappuccinos. Also available are bottled beverages including Odwallas, Ethos water, San Pellegrinos, Izze soda, and Horizon Organic Milk.

Starbucks has a 'you-call-it' culture allowing the customer to specify all modifications to the drink. For example instead of just ordering a Caffe Mocha, customers can order an iced decaf triple grande five pump soy no whip Mocha. Any beverage can have various flavored syrups and whipped cream can be added. Cappuccinos can be made with more foam ("dry") or less foam ("wet"). Starbucks also offers blended beverages such as its trademark "Frappuccino Blended Coffee", a flavored drink of coffee, milk and sugar blended with ice. The name is a portmanteau of “frappé” and “cappuccino,” and was introduced in 1995. Along with Coffee Frappuccino base, Starbucks has a Crème base to make popular beverages such as Strawberries and Crème Frappuccino or a Double Chocolate Chip Crème Frappuccino.

Starbucks supplements these offerings with pastries, salads, cold sandwiches, juices, and bottled water as well as coffee merchandise and at-home brewing equipment, bagged or scooped coffee beans, and (in some regions) preassembled hot breakfast muffin sandwiches.

Stores

Starbucks does not franchise with individuals within North America but does enter into licensing arrangements with some companies.[8] One example is of Starbucks store locations in airports, most of which are operated by HMSHost (formerly Host Marriott Services). Other locations include grocery stores, major food services corporations, college and university campuses and hospitals. In addition, Starbucks has partnered with Magic Johnson's Johnson Development Corporation to form Urban Coffee Opportunities, which opens retail locations in low-income urban areas.[9]

Staffing

There are usually from two to six partners (as Starbucks employees are called), all of them trained baristas, in each retail store at any one time. Black aprons labeled "Coffee Master" are worn by employees who have completed the Coffee Master course, which educates employees in not only the tasting, but also growing regions, roasting and purchasing (including fair trade practices) aspects of the coffee industry.

In the United States Starbucks offers full benefits such as health, dental, and vision insurance, as well as stock-option grants and 401k with matching to employees who work an average of at least 20 hours per week. As of 2007, Starbucks was ranked by Fortune magazine as the 16th best company to work for in the United States, up from 29th in 2006. In 2005 it was ranked the 11th best.[10] Starbucks was also voted as one of the top ten UK workplaces by the Financial Times in 2007.

The Third Place

Starbucks in Frankfurt am Main, Germany
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Starbucks in Frankfurt am Main, Germany

Starbucks envisions local outlets as a "third place" (besides home and work) to spend time, and store design is intended to achieve this. The café section of the store is often outfitted with stuffed chairs and tables with hard-backed chairs. Most stores provide free electricity for customers, and many stores also have wireless internet access provided by T-Mobile.[11] Both an unsecured and secured (with a client) Wi-Fi connections are available.[12]

The company is noted for its non-smoking policy at almost all of its outlets, despite predictions that this would never succeed in markets such as Germany, which used to have few restrictions on smoking. This has changed in 2007 with many German states banning smoking in restaurants and bars. Outlets in Vienna and Mexico City, which have smoking rooms separated by double doors from the coffee shop itself, and a smoking room upstairs in the Largo do Senado, Macau, branch are the closest the company has come to making an exception. According to the company, the smoking ban is to ensure that the coffee aroma is not adulterated. The company also asks its employees to refrain from wearing strong perfumes for similar reasons.[13] Starbucks generally does not prohibit smoking in outside seating areas, unless required by local codes.

International operations

Countries that contain Starbucks stores
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Countries that contain Starbucks stores
A typical sales area, this one in Peterborough, UK, showing a display of food and the beverage preparation area
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A typical sales area, this one in Peterborough, UK, showing a display of food and the beverage preparation area

Internationally, however, Starbucks stores are generally operated by companies in which Starbucks holds a controlling interest. Starbucks owns 50% or less of the companies operating under licensing agreements in Austria, the Bahamas, Bahrain, parts of Canada (Quebec and the Maritimes), China (Beijing, Hong Kong, Macau, Taiwan, Shanghai only; other locations have Starbucks as the controlling owner), Cyprus, Bosnia and Herzegovina, France, Greece, Indonesia, Japan, Jordan, Korea, Kuwait, Lebanon, Malaysia, Mexico, New Zealand, Oman, Peru, Puerto Rico, Philippines, Qatar, Saudi Arabia, Spain, Switzerland, Turkey, and the United Arab Emirates.[14]

Stores are now found in Australia, Austria, Bahamas, Bahrain, Brazil, Canada, Chile, China (including Hong Kong and Macau), Cyprus, Denmark, Dominican Republic, Egypt, Bosnia and Herzegovina, France, Germany, Greece, Indonesia, Ireland, Japan, Jordan, Kuwait, Lebanon, Malaysia, Mexico, New Zealand, the Netherlands, Oman, Peru, Philippines, Puerto Rico, Qatar, Romania, Russia[15], Saudi Arabia, Singapore, South Korea, Spain, Switzerland, Taiwan, Thailand, Turkey, United Arab Emirates, and the United Kingdom.

New stores are also going to be opened in Argentina, Colombia, Czech Republic, Hungary, India, Morocco and Poland.[16][17]

In March 1998, it opened its first store in Taiwan. January of 1999, it opened its first mainland China store in the capital city - Beijing. May of 2000, it opened its first Shanghai store at Huaihai road's Libao skyscraper. In the same month, the first branch in Hong Kong was opened. August of 2002, it opened its first store in Macau. So far, it has about 500 stores in Greater China. There are about 230 stores in mainland in 22 cities. In September 2005, Starbucks donated 500 million US dollars to start its "Starbucks Chinese educational program" to help improve the Chinese educational situation, especially the middle west poor areas. At the end of 2005, "Starbucks business management, Ltd" was established in Shanghai to manage the business in Greater China.[citation needed]

Intellectual property

Starbucks U.S. Brands, LLC, is a Starbucks-owned company that currently holds and owns the property rights to approximately 120 Starbucks Coffee Company patents and trademarks. It is located at 2525 Starbucks Way in Minden, Nevada.[18]

Name

The company is named in part after Starbuck, Captain Ahab's first mate in the book Moby-Dick, as well as a turn-of-the-century mining camp (Starbo or Storbo) on Mount Rainier. According to Howard Schultz's book Pour Your Heart Into It: How Starbucks Built a Company One Cup at a Time, the name of the company was derived from Moby-Dick, although not in as direct a fashion as many assume. Gordon Bowker liked the name "Pequod" (the ship in the novel), but his creative partner Terry Heckler responded, "No one's going to drink a cup of Pee-quod!" Heckler suggested "Starbo." Brainstorming with these two ideas resulted in the company being named for the Pequod's first mate, Starbuck.[19]

International names include:

  • Arabic-speaking countries: ستاربكس (Pronounced the same way as in English)
  • China, Taiwan, Hong Kong: Pinyin: xīng bā kè (星 xīng means "star", while 巴bā 克kè is a transliteration of "-bucks")
  • South Korea: 스타벅스 transliteration (seu-ta-beok-seu), often used in conjunction with the English name
  • Japan: スターバックス transliteration (sutaabakkusu)
  • Thailand: สตาร์บัคส์ transliteration (sa taa bak)

Logo

The logo is a "twin-tailed mermaid, or siren, or mixoparthenos as she's in Greek mythology".[20] The logo has been streamlined over the years. In the first version, the Starbucks siren was topless and had a fully-visible double fish tail. In the second version, her chest was covered by her flowing hair, but her navel was still visible, and the fish tail was cropped slightly. In the current version, her navel and chest are not visible at all, and only vestiges remain of the fish tails. The original logo can still be seen on the Starbucks store in Seattle's Pike Place Market and on certain coffee bags.

At the beginning of September 2006, Starbucks temporarily reintroduced its original brown logo on paper hot drink cups. Starbucks has stated that this was done to show the company's heritage from the Pacific Northwest and to celebrate 35 years of business. The vintage logo has sparked some controversy due to the siren's bare chest. Recently, an elementary school principal in Kent, Washington, was reported as asking teachers to "cover up" the mermaid of the retro cups with a cup sleeve of some kind.[20]

Parodies and infringements

In 2000, San Francisco cartoonist Kieron Dwyer was sued by Starbucks for copyright and trademark infringement after creating a parody of its siren logo and putting it on coffee mugs, t-shirts, and stickers that he sold on his website and at comic book conventions. Dwyer felt that since his work was a parody it was protected by his right to free speech under U.S. law. The judge agreed that Dwyer's work was a parody and thus enjoyed constitutional protection; however, he was forbidden from financially "profiting" from using a "confusingly similar" image of the Starbucks siren logo. Dwyer is currently allowed to display the image as an expression of free speech, but he can no longer sell it.[21]

In 2003, Starbucks successfully sued a Shanghai competitor in China for trademark infringement, because that chain used a green-and-white logo with a similar sounding Chinese name.[22]

In 2005 Starbucks lost a trademark infringement case against a smaller coffee vendor in South Korea that operates coffee stations under the name and style Starpreya. The company, Elpreya, says Starpreya is named after the Norse goddess, Freja, with the letters of that name changed to ease pronunciation by Koreans. The court rejected the Seattle-based retailer's claim that the logo of Starpreya is too similar to the famous Starbucks logo.

The DC universe has a fictional coffee company called "SunDollers", which was originally based in Star City, but is now present in every city, like Gotham City and Metropolis.

On the TV Show Scrubs the hospital coffee shop known as "Coffeebucks" is a combination of the Coffee Bean and Starbucks.

Criticism and controversy

Starbucks at the Forbidden City in Beijing (closed since July 2007)
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Starbucks at the Forbidden City in Beijing (closed since July 2007)

The Starbucks location in the former imperial palace in Beijing closed in July 2007. The coffee shop had been a source on ongoing controversy since its opening in 2000 with protesters objecting that the presence of the American chain in this location "was trampling on Chinese Culture".[23][24][25][26]

Anti-competitive tactics

Some of the methods Starbucks has used to expand and maintain their dominant market position, such as buying out competitors' leases, acquiring independent coffee shops and converting them into Starbucks stores, and clustering several locations in a small geographical area (i.e., saturating the market), have been labeled anti-competitive by critics.[27] For example, Starbucks fueled its initial expansion into the UK market with a buyout of its only major potential competitor (the 49 outlet Seattle Coffee Company), then used its capital and influence to obtain prime locations, some of which operated at a financial loss. Critics claimed this was an unfair attempt to drive out small, independent competitors, who could not afford to pay inflated prices for premium real estate.[28]

Labor disputes

Since 2004, workers at seven Starbucks stores in New York City have joined the Industrial Workers of the World (IWW) as the Starbucks Workers Union.[29] According to a Starbucks Union press release, since then, the union membership has begun expanding to Chicago and Maryland.[30] On March 7, 2006, the IWW and Starbucks agreed to a National Labor Relations Board settlement in which three Starbucks workers were granted almost US$2,000 in back wages and two fired employees were offered reinstatement.[31][32][33] According to the Starbucks Union, on November 24 2006, IWW members picketed Starbucks locations in more than 50 cities around the world in countries including Australia, Canada, Germany, Great Britain and New Zealand, as well as U.S. cities including New York, Chicago, Minneapolis and San Francisco,[34] to protest the firing of five Starbucks Workers Union organizers by Starbucks and to demand their reinstatement.

Some Starbucks baristas in Canada,[35] Australia and New Zealand,[36] and the United States[37] belong to a variety of unions. In 2005, Starbucks paid out US$165,000 to eight employees at its Kent, Washington, roasting plant to settle charges that they had been retaliated against for being pro-union. At the time, the plant workers were represented by the IUOE. Starbucks admitted no wrongdoing in the settlem