Starbucks (NASDAQ: SBUX, SEHK: 4337) is the world's largest multinational chain of coffee shops,^[1][2] with corporate headquarters in Seattle, Washington. Its coffee shops in the U.S. and Canada are especially popular among students and young urban professionals.

The company was in part named after Starbuck, a character in Moby-Dick, and its insignia is a stylized cartoon siren.

In addition to coffee, Starbucks shops also serve other drinks, both hot and cold, and pastries. Some Starbucks stores are inside other retail locations such as supermarkets and bookstores (though these stores are not owned or operated by the company). As a general rule, Starbucks does not offer promotional prices on its products, which tend to be higher than those of competitors.

According to the company fact sheet, as of February 2006, Starbucks had 6,216 company-operated outlets worldwide: 5,028 of them in the United States and 1,188 in other countries and U.S. territories. In addition, the company has 4,585 joint-venture and licensed outlets, 2,633 of them in the United States and 1,952 in other countries and U.S. territories.

Currently the members of the company's board of directors are Jim Donald, Barbara Bass, Howard Behar, Bill Bradley, Mellody Hobson, Olden Lee, Greg Maffei, Howard Schultz, James Shennan, Javier Teruel, Myron Ullman, and Craig Weatherup. The store does not franchise.

History

Entrepreneur Howard Schultz joined the company in 1982, and, after a trip to Milan, suggested 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 focus. To them, coffee was something to be prepared in the home. Certain 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, led by Baldwin, took the opportunity to purchase Peet's. (Baldwin still works there today.) In 1987 they sold the Starbucks chain to Il Giornale, which rebranded the Il Giornale outlets as Starbucks and quickly began to expand. Starbucks opened its first locations outside Seattle in Vancouver, British Columbia (at Waterfront Station) and Chicago, Illinois that same year. The first Starbucks location outside of North America opened in Tokyo in 1996, and Starbucks now has outlets in 30 additional countries. 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 the time of its initial public offering on the stock market in 1992, Starbucks had grown to 165 outlets. In April 2003, Starbucks added nearly that many new outlets in a single day by completing 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. Counting stores not owned by the company, there are currently more than 10,800 Starbucks locations worldwide, although as of 2006 none are located in Italy, the country where Schultz found his original inspiration for Il Giornale.

Starbucks' success in the U.S. market has often, though not always, been replicated around the world; it has faced competition in markets which are already saturated with coffee products, though Starbucks consistently distinguishes itself with its quality of service and of product. A number of retailers have emulated Starbucks' business model, many owned by former Starbucks employees who founded their own businesses upon their knowledge of Starbucks' operations.

Starbucks offers full benefits such as health and vision insurance as well as stock-option grants to employees who put in as little as 20 hours a week. In 2006 Starbucks was voted the twenty-ninth best company to work for in the United States.^[3] Previously in 2005, there were voted the eleventh best.