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If you ask me what I would like to do in spare times over weekends or holidays, I would like to answer sitting in Starbucks Coffee. Yes it is my favourite place to hang around with my family and friends, grab an interesting book to read or bring a laptop to surf the net.

In fact, there’s a certain reason why I like to sit there while there’re so many coffee shops around. Do you think I really like the coffee? Not really.. Mostly it is because of the brand. It sounds cooler compare to sitting in an unknown coffee shops.

When you enter into Starbucks coffee shop, you’ll get hit with the looks, sounds and smells. The store layout and color scheme are consistent between shops. The counter can just be found as you walk in and you’ll hear the sounds of coffee machine.

Starbucks was started in 1971, when three academics - English teacher Jerry Baldwin, history teacher Zev Siegel, and writer Gordon Bowker - opened a store called Starbucks Coffee, Tea, and Spice in the touristy Pikes Place Market in Seattle.

They shared a love of coffees and teas and believed they could build a good coffee business in Seattle, pretty similar to what had been emerged in the San Francisco Bay area. Each of them invested $1,350 and borrowed another $5,000 from a bank. They chose the name Starbucks in honor of Starbuck, the coffee-loving first mate in Herman Melvilles’s Moby Dick. And also, because they thought the name has the romance impression of high seas and seafaring tradition of early coffee traders. The company logo - designed by an artist friend - was a two tailed mermaid encircled by the store name.

Click here to read a Brief History of Starbucks Coffee.

Starbucks story is interesting because of the unusual way of approach to build global chain and global brand. Starbucks is not a franchise (which many people think it is), but it retained ownership through corporate-owned locations. This company doesn’t spend a lot of money on advertisement, the brand has strengthen itself without much advertising involved.

Now with more than 7,300 retail outlets around the world and approximately 25 million customers visiting every week, the company reported net annual revenues of more than $4 billion for its 2003 fiscal year. This is the nearest annual profit I’ve been able to find.

Starbucks gets it strength by providing its employees a great place of work. Starbucks treats its nearly 75,000 employees as partners. They spent as much times and dollars as they can to speak to their employees. Thus employees seem to be taken care of and loyal to the company.

“Social responsibility is not an add-on to our business,” said Starbucks president and CEO Orin Smith, in an interview with Business Ethics editor Marjorie Kelly. “It’s an essential part of who we are.”

In year 2000, Smith succeeded Howard Schultz. The visionary founder who has led Starbucks to the whole world as international brand. This is a statement from Schultz about company mission,

“not a trophy that decorates office walls, but an organic body of beliefs and a foundation of guiding principles we hold in common.”

Starbucks was among the first companies to offer health benefits and stock options for its part-time employees. Currently, its corporate social-responsibility is an important part of the business model, which the company can’t operate without it.
Here are Starbucks Guiding Principles:

• Provide a great work environment and treat each other with respect and dignity.
• Embrace diversity as an essential component in the way we do business.
• Apply the highest standards of excellence to the purchasing, roasting and fresh delivery of our coffee.
• Develop enthusiastically satisfied customers all of the time.
• Contribute positively to our communities and our environment.
• Recognize that profitability is essential to our future success.

The result is, Starbucks has become a place to come after home and work, where people gather around, have a nice coffee and nice chat. Like Schultz says, “We have benefited by the fact that our stores are reliable, safe, and consistent, where people can take a break,”

That wasn’t necessarily the plan when Schultz first moved the coffee roaster into retail stores, but it evolved that way through customer demand. This has given the brand tremendous value, he says. Through coffee, which is a universal drink, Schultz says Starbucks has created a universal language. “We couldn’t have created that through traditional advertising,” he contends.