Will His Impact On Labor Be One Of His Core Legacies?

-Source-Forbes-

Howard Schultz announced his retirement today as executive chairman of Starbucks, capping off a remarkable entrepreneurial journey building a tiny coffee-shop chain into one of the most recognized and loyally followed brands in the world. Schultz had joined the company in the early 1980s and purchased the chain in 1987, scaling it over the next three decades into the global coffee behemoth it is today with a footprint of 27,000+ stores and over 250,000 employees (or partners in Starbucks parlance).

Throughout this rapid expansion across markets, there was one remarkable tenet that was at the heart of the scaling process: the consistency of the Starbucks experience. In his book, Pour Your Heart Into It, Schultz dives deeper into his motivations and philosophy behind this key growth mandate:

More and more, I realize, customers are looking for a Third Place, an inviting, stimulating, sometimes even soulful respite from the pressures of work and home. People come to Starbucks for a refreshing time-out, a break in their busy days, a personal treat. Their visit has to be rewarding. If any detail is wrong, the brand suffers. That’s why we love the saying, “Everything matters.” In effect, our stores are our billboards. Customers form an impression of the Starbucks brand the minute they walk in the door. The ambience we create there has as much to do with brand-building as the quality of the coffee. Every Starbucks store is carefully designed to enhance the quality of everything the customers see, touch, hear, smell, or taste. All the sensory signals have to appeal to the same high standards. The artwork, the music, the aromas, the surfaces all have to send the same subliminal message as the flavor of the coffee: Everything here is best-of-class. Read more