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...Schultz is taking it upon himself to restore the cult of caffeine. On Jan. 7, the passionate entrepreneur--whom employees call Uncle Howie--again became CEO, a position he ceded in 2000 for a seat on the board. He has lured back some apostles from the start-up years, and they've designed a plan to yank Starbucks' focus from gaining efficiency and appeasing Wall Street back to selling exemplary coffee with the kind of service and ambiance that makes a $4 latte worth the price...
...Jan. 7, the board reinstated Schultz as CEO to revive the coffee empire. "It's a time for reinvention, and there's no one better to do it than Howard," says Howard Behar, who ran Starbucks' international operations throughout the late 1990s and as a board member voted to reinstall Schultz. The stock rallied 8%, and baristas went wild. "Woooohooooo!" read two posts on StarbucksGossip.com "Welcome back, Howie!!! All of Starbucks missed you, and we can't wait to see where you take us," read another. More than a few posts skeptically pointed out that Schultz had never gone...
Schultz is no less messianic. "I came back because it's personal," he says. "I came back because I love this company and our people and feel a deep sense of responsibility to 200,000 people and their families." On the afternoon of Jan. 7, he gathered the 4,000-some people who work at Starbucks headquarters. "I said, 'We need everyone in this room to believe in the mission of the company, and if you don't, there's nothing wrong, but you shouldn't be here,'" Schultz recalls...
Schultz moved swiftly. On Jan. 30, he announced that Starbucks would close 100 underperforming stores and curtail U.S. store openings to about 1,175 in 2008, down 34% from the prior year. The breakfast sandwiches were toast in North America. To get focused on the long term, it would stop reporting comp-store sales to Wall Street. Then, at the March 19 annual meeting, the company laid out its initiatives to reinvigorate the "coffee experience." Some of the projects had been kicked around, but with Schultz back in the CEO chair, everything started to get done more rapidly. "The rate...
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