Posted Mar 1, 2007, 2:38 AM
|
 |
Registered User
|
|
Join Date: Jun 2006
Location: Coquitlam
Posts: 39,154
|
|
|
Starbuck's global expansion started here (vancouver)
Quote:
A small kiosk at the SeaBus terminal in 1987 was the Seattle-based Starbucks' first international venture
Twenty years ago this week, Starbucks opened its first Vancouver coffee bar in a small kiosk in the SeaBus terminal on Cordova Street.
Today there are 238 Starbucks outlets throughout the Lower Mainland -- a third of all Canadian stores. Even Starbucks chairman Howard Schultz is surprised by that number.
"If somebody told me we'd have that many stores in Vancouver, I'd have said probably not because it sounds like a lot to me," he said in a telephone interview Monday from Starbucks headquarters in Seattle.
"But that number is linked to demand. Our customers vote every day and when we think our stores are getting too busy, we tend to open more stores."
The global coffee giant -- with more than 13,000 stores in 40 countries -- wants to operate 40,000 stores, probably within the next decade, so expect even more Vancouver-area green-white-and-black Starbucks mermaid logos in the future.
"I don't have a specific number but clearly we're not finished in Vancouver," Schultz said.
The 53-year-old Brooklyn-raised entrepreneur, who bought the small Seattle coffee business in 1987 and guided its transformation into a retail juggernaut that expects to post more than $9 billion US in sales this year, will visit Vancouver this week to celebrate Starbucks' 20th anniversary in the city.
He said Vancouver holds a special place in Starbucks' history because it was the site of the company's first non-Seattle store and its success here paved the way for global expansion.
"Vancouver was very, very critical because if Vancouver failed, I think we would have had a difficult time raising future money from outside investors, who were looking to see whether or not Starbucks could succeed outside Seattle," Schultz said.
"I'm not sure where we'd be today if Vancouver hadn't worked."
Starbucks officials correctly predicted that Vancouver's sophisticated coffee-food-wine culture would embrace the concept of high-end coffee at high-end prices. But Schultz said few at the time would have guessed the city would eagerly patronize Starbucks stores across the street from each other.
The company opened a store at the southwest corner of Robson and Thurlow in 1988 and less than three years later, opened another store at the northeast corner of the same intersection.
"I'm not sure any other retailer in the world would have had the courage, or perhaps the stupidity, to do something like that," Schultz said. "We were just so busy with that first store. It was undersized and then an opportunity came up [across the street] so we just said: 'Let's do it.' "
Starbucks made international headlines this past weekend when a leaked Schultz memo to company executives -- warning about the "commoditization" of the Starbucks experience -- was posted on the Internet. The company has confirmed its authenticity.
Schultz wouldn't discuss the memo Monday but it speaks for itself, noting there has been a "watering down" of the Starbucks experience due to a series of decisions made to facilitate rapid growth over the past decade.
|
rest of article here: http://www.canada.com/vancouversun/n...f-80bfdf2a8036
|
Linear Mode
