Pour Your Heart Into It (9 page)

I began pacing around inside the store, and to keep myself occupied, helped with last-minute preparations and rearranging. On the left stood our usual whole-bean counter, stocked with bins of coffee. Behind it, a coffee expert in a brown Starbucks grocer’s apron checked his metal scoop, his scale, and his grinding machine. He verified that each of the bin drawer labels correctly indicated its contents and readied a row of rubber stamps that would be used to mark each bag of coffee sold with its varietal name. He straightened the mugs and coffeemakers and tea canisters on their shelves along the wall, products already familiar to Seattle’s Starbucks fans.

In the right rear corner of the store, my experiment was about to begin. Just like baristas in Milan, two enthusiastic employees were working a gleaming chrome machine pulling shots of espresso and practicing their newly acquired skill of steaming milk to a foam for cappuccinos.

At 7
A.M.
sharp, we unlocked the door. One by one, curious people began walking in on their way to their offices. Many ordered a regular cup of coffee. Others asked about the unfamiliar espresso drinks listed on the Italian menu. The baristas were jazzed about the new drinks and enjoyed explaining what each contained. They recommended the drink I had discovered in Verona, one that many customers had never heard of: caffè latte, espresso with steamed milk. As far as I know, America was first introduced to caffè latte that morning.

I watched several people take their first sip. As I had, most opened their eyes wide, responding first to the unaccustomed burst of intense flavor. They hesitated, then sipped again, savoring the sweet warmth of the milk. I saw smiles as the full richness of the drink filled their mouths.

The pace quickened during the early morning rush, and then tapered off. It was awkward serving people in the cramped back corner of a store. Customers jammed into that small space on the right while the retail counter stood empty. If that store had been a ship, it would have capsized.

From the minute we opened, this much was clear to me: Starbucks had entered a different business. There could be no turning back.

By closing time, about 400 customers had passed through the door—a much higher tally than the average customer count of 250 at Starbucks’ best-performing bean stores. More important, I could feel the first ripples of that same warm social interaction and engaging artistry that had captivated me in Italy. I went home that day as high as I’ve ever been.

As weeks went on, business grew, almost all on the beverage side. Within two months, the store was serving 800 customers a day. The baristas couldn’t make espressos fast enough, and lines began snaking out the door onto the sidewalk. Whenever I stopped by to check on the progress of my experiment, customers came up to me, eager to share their enthusiasm. The response was overwhelming.

The Fourth and Spring store became a gathering place, and its atmosphere was electric. I thrived on it. So did the small cohort of Starbucks people who had supported the idea, people like Gay Niven, a merchandise buyer at Starbucks since 1979, and Deborah Tipp Hauck, whom I had hired in 1982 to manage a store.

Here were the test results I was looking for. With the success of the first espresso bar, I began to imagine many further possibilities. We could open coffee stores around the city, all dedicated to serving espresso drinks. These would become not only a catalyst but also a vehicle for introducing a new, broader base of customers to Starbucks coffee.

Surely, I thought, the popularity of Fourth and Spring would overcome any doubts Jerry Baldwin still had. He would see as vividly as I did the great opportunity that had arisen to take Starbucks to a whole new level.

Once again, my bubble burst.

To Jerry, the very success of that store felt wrong. Although I continue to have enormous respect for him, Jerry and I viewed the coffee business, and the world, differently. To him, espresso drinks were a distraction from the core business of selling exquisite arabica coffee beans at retail. He didn’t want customers to think of Starbucks as a place to get a quick cup of coffee to go.

To me, espresso was the heart and soul of the coffee experience. The point of a coffee store was not just to teach customers about fine coffee but to show them
how
to enjoy it.

I must have seemed a real nuisance to Jerry during the months following the Fourth and Spring opening. Each day I would rush into his office, showing him the sales figures and the customer counts. He couldn’t deny that the venture was succeeding, but he still didn’t want to go forward with it.

Jerry and I never had an argument, throughout the entire course of our professional relationship. But we both recognized that we had reached an impasse, that our disagreement was not over merely a new twist on business, but over what could potentially represent a sea change for the company. Shrewd as he was, he knew there was a fire burning inside me, a fire there was no way to put out.

After weeks of trying to convince him, I strode into Jerry’s office one day, resolved to have a conclusive discussion about the issue.

“The customers are telling us something,” I said. “This is a big idea. We’ve got to keep moving on it.”

“We’re coffee roasters. I don’t want to be in the restaurant business,” he said, wearily, realizing we were going to have yet another run-through of this topic.

“It’s not the restaurant business!” I insisted. “We’re giving people a chance to enjoy our coffee the way it’s supposed to be prepared.”

“Howard, listen to me. It’s just not the right thing to do. If we focus too much on serving coffee, we’ll become just another restaurant or cafeteria. It may seem reasonable, each step of the way, but in the end, we’ll lose our coffee roots.”

“But we’re reconnecting with our coffee roots!” I argued. “This will bring more people into our stores.”

Seeing my determination, Jerry sat silently at his desk for a few minutes, his arms folded in front of him, until he finally offered:

“Maybe we can put espresso machines in the back of one or two other stores.”

“It could be so much bigger than that,” I repeated, knowing that if I accepted that concession, it would be the farthest I would ever be able to take the company.

“Starbucks doesn’t need to be any bigger than it is. If you get too many customers in and out, you can’t get to know them the way we always have.”

“In Italy, the baristas know their customers,” I answered.

“Besides, we’re too deeply in debt to consider pursuing this idea. Even if we wanted to, we couldn’t afford to.” He stood up and prepared to leave for home, but seeing my reluctance to end the conversation, added firmly: “I’m sorry, Howard. We aren’t going to do it. You’ll have to live with that.”

I was depressed for months, paralyzed by uncertainty. I felt torn in two by conflicting feelings: loyalty to Starbucks and confidence in my vision for Italian-style espresso bars.

I was busy enough with my everyday work, flying back and forth to San Francisco and finding ways to consolidate the operations of the two companies, that I could have distracted myself and just dropped the idea. But I refused to let it die. The espresso business felt too right, and my instincts about it ran too deep to let it go.

One weekend, around that time, when I went to a downtown athletic club for my usual game of Sunday basketball, I was paired up with a wiry, muscular blond guy, about my age. He was two inches taller than my own six feet two, and a good player.

When the game was over, we started talking, and he introduced himself as Scott Greenburg. He told me he was a lawyer with a big firm in town. After he learned what I did, he said he loved Starbucks coffee. So I began to bring a pound of coffee to the games for him every now and then. We met occasionally for beers, and over time, I found myself sharing some of my frustrations with him.

Scott, as it happened, was a corporate lawyer, whose job it was to advise companies on many matters, including private placements and public stock offerings. When I told him I was thinking of going independent and opening espresso bars, he said he thought investors might be interested.

Gradually, in talking over my ideas with Scott and Sheri, I realized what I had to do.
This is my moment
, I thought.
If I don’t seize the opportunity, if I don’t step out of my comfort zone and risk it all, if I let too much time tick on, my moment will pass
. I knew that if I didn’t take advantage of this opportunity, I would replay it in my mind for my whole life, wondering:
What if? Why didn’t I?
This was my shot. Even if it didn’t work out, I still had to try it.

I made up my mind to leave Starbucks and start my own company. My idea was to open stores that would serve coffee by the cup and espresso drinks, concentrating on high-traffic downtown locations. I wanted to re-create the romance and artistry and community I had seen in Italy.

It took several months of planning, but I finally made the move. Knowing how frustrated I had become, Jerry and Gordon supported the idea. They let me stay on in my job and at my office until I was ready to move, in late 1985.

In some respects, leaving to start my own company took a lot of courage. Just as I made up my mind, we found out that Sheri was pregnant. Without my salary, we would have to live on her income until I could get the new company up and running. She was willing to go back to work soon after the baby was born in January, but I hated the fact that, because of my decision, she had no choice.

But at some level, I felt I’d been preparing for this step my entire life. Ironically, it ran counter to the values my parents had taught me. From my dad, I learned that quitting a job causes instability and disruption in the family. My mother’s constant refrain was: “You have a good job. Why quit?”

But I saw the move as consistent with my life’s dream, my earliest desires to do something for myself and for my family, to achieve something unique, to be in control of my own destiny. The insecurity, the desire for respect, the burning need to rise far above the circumstances of my parents’ struggles all came together in that defining moment.

My close friend Kenny G later told me about a similar experience in his life. In the 1980s he was in an established band, with a secure position and income. (This was long before he became famous as a jazz saxophonist.) But he realized that he would have to leave the band if he was ever to find his own sound. Musically speaking, he went out and did exactly that. If he hadn’t, today he’d just be a saxophone player in some little-known band.

What distinguishes the talented person who makes it from the person who has even more talent but doesn’t get ahead? Look at the aspiring actors waiting tables in New York, as an example: Many of them are probably no less gifted than stars like Robert DeNiro and Susan Sarandon.

Part of what constitutes success is timing and chance. But most of us have to create our own opportunities and be prepared to jump when we see a big one others can’t see.

It’s one thing to dream, but when the moment is right, you’ve got to be willing to leave what’s familiar and go out to find your own sound. That’s what I did in 1985. If I hadn’t, Starbucks wouldn’t be what it is today.

CHAPTER 5
Naysayers Never Built a Great Enterprise

We judge ourselves by what
we feel capable of doing,
while others judge us by
what we have already done.

—H
ENRY
W
ADSWORTH
L
ONGFELLOW,
Kavanagh,
1849

It’s a classic American tale, every entrepreneur’s dream: to start with a great idea, attract some investors, and build a business that is profitable and sustainable. Trouble is, you usually have to start as the underdog.

If you want to know how underdogs feel, try to raise money for a new enterprise. People will shut you out. They’ll regard you with suspicion. They’ll undermine your self-confidence. They’ll offer you every reason imaginable why your idea simply won’t work.

Being an underdog has a flip side, though, for facing such adversity can be invigorating. In my case, part of me relished the fact that so many people said my plan couldn’t be done. No matter how many times people put me down, I believed strongly that I could pull it off. I was so confident of winning that I enjoyed being in a position where people’s expectations were so low that I knew I could beat them.

Nobody ever accomplished anything by believing the naysayers. And few have done so by sticking to proven ideas in proven fields.

It’s those who follow the road less traveled who create new industries, invent new products, build long-lasting enterprises, and inspire those around them to push their abilities to the highest levels of achievement.

If you stop being the scrappy underdog, fighting against the odds, you risk the worst fate of all: mediocrity.