Happy Throwback Thursday! Today we’re featuring the year 1987, and that was the year that Starbucks opened its first locations outside of Seattle! They opened 2 stores that year, in Vancouver and Chicago, and they haven’t stopped expanding since. Today there are nearly 34,000 Starbucks in 80 countries.
The coffee chain opened in Seattle in 1971, and originally just sold coffee beans and equipment. It was founded by 3 business partners who all met when they were students at the University of San Francisco. When deciding on a name, an advertising agency advised them that words starting with “st” were more powerful. So they began brainstorming, and decided on “Starbo”, which was an old mining town in the Cascade Mountains. From there, they remembered “Starbuck”, a character in Moby Dick, and the name stuck.
Since they named the store after a nautical character, the group thought the logo should also have imagery of the sea. One of their creative partners came across an old Norse woodcut of a siren with a split tail. The original logo was brown, but later changed to green, a nod to the trio’s alma mater.
In 1987, the original owners sold Starbucks to their former director of marketing. He quickly expanded the company, and by 1989 the company was operating 46 locations across the Pacific Northwest and Midwest, and they were roasting more than 2 million pounds of coffee each year. For 20 years, from 1987-2007, Starbucks expanded so quickly that they were opening 2 stores a day on average during that time!
Starbucks opened its largest location ever in November 2019. It’s called the Starbucks Reserve Roastery and can be found on Michigan Ave. in Chicago. It’s 5 floors and 35,000 square feet with 200 employees! All the coffee served there is freshly roasted on-site, and there’s also an Italian bakery, cocktail bar, and a curved elevator.
Starbucks expanded outside the world of coffee in 2007, partnering with Concord Music Group to start its own record label called Hear Music. The label’s biggest seller was Ray Charles’ Grammy-winning album Genius Loves Company, which sold 2.86 million records. They have a pretty impressive roster of artists, including James Taylor, Paul Simon, Joni Mitchell, and John Mellencamp. Learn more here.