Word: schultz
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...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 far (his office...
...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...
...just Schultz who's back. It was as if he were reassembling the band: Roberts, the merchandising guru; Wanda Herndon, who left in 2006 but returned to run global communications; and Arthur Rubinfeld, the company's first vice president for store development, who has known Schultz since the two were in their 20s. Schultz holed up with them and others he'd promoted from within at the Palace Ballroom in downtown Seattle for three days of 14-hour strategy sessions. The retreat started by listening to Beatles music and talking about how great icons reinvent themselves...
...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...
Only a figure like Schultz can pull off such bold action, says Rüdiger Fahlenbrach, an assistant professor of finance at Ohio State University's Fisher College of Business who has studied the return of founder CEOs. "A founder may come in, and because he started the company, people more readily accept these things," says Fahlenbrach. That's clearly what's happening at Starbucks. "Howard, frankly, is the only person who could do what we needed to do," says global strategy head Gass. That courage was on full display on Feb. 26, when Starbucks closed...