This may sound a bit naive, but I got here by believing in big dreams.
My mother taught me something at a young age - she said 'you are the company you keep'. To define yourself by some label or some level of resources - that's pretty shallow.
If you look at coffee, tea, food and juice, we think there are inherent opportunities. If you look at health bars or grab-and-go products that are in our stores, we think we can significantly enhance them and make them more widely available.
Managing a business, small or large, today requires an extremely disciplined, thoughtful approach with regard to the pressure that people are under.
Don't buy preground coffee.
People have come to me over the years and said to me: 'I admire the culture of Starbucks. Can you come give a speech and help us turn our culture around?' I wish it were that easy. Turning a culture around is very difficult to do because it's based on a series of many, many decisions, and the organization is framed by those decisions.
My kids probably started drinking coffee in their late teens.
Turning a culture around is very difficult to do because it's based on a series of many, many decisions, and the organization is framed by those decisions.
Anybody can leverage celebrity for profit.
I think what we're lacking in society, not only in the U.S. but also around the world, is to find heroes once again and to celebrate these kind of people.
The lifeblood of job creation in America is small business, but they can't get access to credit.
Social and digital media is a bullet train, and that bullet train is not coming home.
The growth of the company and the license that Starbucks has is to participate in other food and beverage opportunities. We have a global business... and in many parts of the world, tea is much, much bigger than coffee, and we're going to bring tea and bring our capability and our understanding of what we've done for coffee to tea.
I never wanted to be on any billionaires list. I never define myself by net worth. I always try to define myself by my values.
I think if you're an entrepreneur, you've got to dream big and then dream bigger.
Starbucks is not an advertiser; people think we are a great marketing company, but in fact we spend very little money on marketing and more money on training our people than advertising.
Europe has always represented a major strategic opportunity to achieve our goal of creating and building an enduring global brand.
Even though people are under economic pressure, they still want to support those brands with values that are compatible with their own.
We need to reinvent food at Starbucks. Less could be more.
Care more than others think wise.