This May Sound A Bit Naive, But

It's Ironic That Retailers And Restaurants Live Or Die On Customer Service, Yet Their Employees Have Some Of The Lowest Pay And Worst Benefits Of Any Industry. That's One Reason So Many Retail Experiences Are Mediocre For The Public.

Customers Don't Always Know What They Want. The Decline In Coffee-drinking Was Due To The Fact That Most Of The Coffee People Bought Was Stale And They Weren't Enjoying It. Once They Tasted Ours And Experienced What We Call "the Third Place" ... A Gathering Place Between Home And Work Where They Were Treated With Respect.. They Found We Were Filling A Need They Didn't Know They Had.

When I Returned As Ceo In 2008, Starbucks Had Forgotten That Meaningful Innovations Balance An Organization's Heritage With Modern-day Relevance And Market Differentiation, So We Had To Reorient. In One Brainstorming Session, We Visited And Observed Great Retailers, Then Asked Ourselves, 'if Starbucks Did Not Exist, What Type Of Coffee Experience Would We Create?

Post-9/11, We Saw An Immediate Uptick In The Amount Of People In Our Stores, All Over The Country. People Wanted That Human Connection. We Are Not Going To Fracture The Starbucks Experience.

We Think Of Starbucks Not As A Coffee Company But A Media Company.