Word: schultze
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...walking up to a starbucks with Howard Schultz when we spot a barista standing in the parking lot, passing 11 cups of coffee through a car window. "I've never seen that," says Schultz, who took over Starbucks in 1987 and transformed it from a six-shop seller of beans into a thread that runs through our social tapestry. He asks the barista what she's doing. She says the drive-through order was so large she decided to bring it out. Schultz waves to the driver to roll down her window--"Where are they going with 11 beverages...
...very difficult year. Traffic at U.S. stores dropped for the first time in its history, and then comparable-store sales--a key measure of a retailer's health--turned negative too. Its stock has slid some 40% in the past 12 months, shaving more than $400 million from Schultz's personal bean pile...
...perhaps most hurtful have been the mounting complaints from customers, employees and even Schultz himself that in its pursuit of growth, the company has strayed too far from its roots. As Schultz memorably wrote to the company's top execs on Valentine's Day, 2007, "We have had to make a series of decisions that, in retrospect, have led to the watering down of the Starbucks experience and what some might call the commoditization of our brand." The company that taught us that coffee is not a commodity has itself become...
...business fall for the first time ever. The slip is partly due to softening consumer spending, but Starbucks executives insist that by retraining the company on a coffee-centric customer experience, they can revive sales and the brand. "This is in many ways self-induced," says Schultz. "That's why I feel so confident and optimistic we can fix it ourselves...
...early January, Schultz (who took over Starbucks in 1987 when it was a six-shop coffee bean retailer), resumed the title of CEO, a position he originally left in 2000 for a seat on the board of directors. Since then, the company has announced a number of major changes. On January 30, the company said it would stop selling breakfast sandwiches (in response to criticism that the odor covered up the smell of coffee), slow its rapid pace of opening stores in the U.S., and no longer report comparable-store sales to Wall Street - a sign that the company...