Source : INDIA TODAY NEWS
You think of Starbucks, and the first thing that probably pops up in your mind is coffee, but Howard Schultz looked at coffee as only part of what made a caf work. In 1983, Schultz travelled to Milan, Italy, on a business trip and noticed something that was rather different from Starbucks in Seattle. Italian coffee bars were not simply places where people bought coffee beans and left; instead they were places where customers stopped, talked and returned as part of their daily routine.
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Schultz wanted to bring exactly that experience back to the US. At the time, Starbucks was still a small Seattle company that focused mainly on selling roasted coffee beans, tea and spices; it did not yet look like the coffeehouse chain people know today. So, what did Schultz see in Milan?
IT WAS MORE THAN JUST THE COFFEE
Schultz had joined Starbucks in 1982 as its director of retail operations and marketing. A year later, during his first trip to Italy, he became interested in the city’s espresso bars and the way they fit into everyday life. According to Starbucks, Schultz was amazed by the sense of community in these coffee bars. People knew the baristas, were able to recognise other customers and treated the caf as part of their daily routine.
That was completely different from the Starbucks business model at the time. The company’s original store at Seattle’s Pike Place Market sold whole coffee beans for customers to take home, and the idea of turning Starbucks into a place where people could sit down for an espresso was not immediately embraced by the company’s founders. But Schultz had seen something he thought could work, and he returned to Seattle with the idea of bringing an Italian-style coffeehouse experience to the US that was adapted for American customers.
SO, WHAT HAPPENED WHEN HE RETURNED?
In 1984, the company opened an espresso bar at its downtown Seattle store at 4th and Spring. The experiment included espresso drinks as well as the Caff Latte, and was rather successful. But Starbucks’ founders were still primarily focused on their existing business of selling roasted coffee beans. Schultz eventually left the company in 1985 and started his own coffee business, Il Giornale. It had a different name, but the idea was familiar.
Il Giornale served brewed coffee and espresso drinks made with Starbucks beans. It was designed around the kind of caf experience Schultz had observed in Italy, where customers were encouraged to spend time there rather than simply buy coffee and leave. That small experiment eventually changed the direction of Starbucks itself, after Schultz bought out Starbucks.
HOW DID ITALY LEAD TO STARBUCKS AS WE KNOW IT?
Schultz and his investors bought Starbucks’ assets in 1987, including its name, roasting plant and six Seattle stores. Il Giornale then adopted the Starbucks name, and this time, the coffeehouse model was at the centre of the business. The company began expanding beyond Seattle, first into Chicago and Vancouver, and later into other US cities and international markets. The caf became a place to sit, work, meet someone or simply spend some time between home and work.
Schultz envisioned this idea as creating a “third place” between home and work. American customers and the growing Starbucks business transformed what came next, but the basic observation Schultz made in Milan was still important: people were not just buying coffee. They were buying an experience around it, and that is perhaps the most interesting part of the story.
The Starbucks most people recognise today (the caf, espresso drinks, baristas and the idea of staying for a while) was not the company’s original model. Schultz’s experience in Italy helped in creating that approach, which Starbucks developed into its own coffeehouse concept in the years that followed. Eventually, the model travelled far beyond Seattle and even made its way back to Italy, when Starbucks opened its first Italian location in Milan in 2018.
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SOURCE :- TIMES OF INDIA
