How Starbucks transformed coffee and became an iconic American brand
Schultz was given a corner of the shop to introduce espresso drinks. In April 1984, Starbucks opened its sixth store in Seattle. Kayes said Schultz was essentially trying to import a social institution that 4rabet online did not yet exist in the United States. Starbucks was playing in the same hall, but we were playing without a string section.” “The Italians had turned the drinking of coffee into a symphony, and it felt right. What he encountered there, he said, reshaped his understanding of coffee entirely.
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Business pressures of scale continued to push Starbucks toward speed and convenience, and technology accelerated that shift. “They’ve just become polyamorous in the sense that they love their coffee from different places now.” “These were difficult drinks to make, time-consuming, and often came out incorrect,” Kayes said. The strategy helped drive revenue, but complicated life behind the counter.
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- It also helped customers find new drinks on its mobile app, through its trending beverage category or the secret menu under its « offers » tab.
- “I once waited 20 minutes for my drink, and it ended up never coming, and I just left.”
- “The notion of creating a place where people could come and have community, I think, was pretty revolutionary, » Michelli said.
Losing its way
The brand had become synonymous with a new wave of labor organization. But Schultz later acknowledged speed also changed the rhythm of the coffeehouse. Starbucks leaned heavily into the trend, especially after the pandemic, building new drive-thru locations and encouraging mobile pickup. Analysts note that if app and gift card balances were treated like deposits, Starbucks would rank in the top 10% of U.S. banks by deposit size. Customers could load money into the app and order remotely.
“Americans didn’t really know what high-end coffee was,” Kayes said. For its first decade, the business remained small and local, opening a handful of additional stores around Seattle and focusing entirely on selling quality arabica beans. The founders named the company after Starbuck, the first mate in the classic novel « Moby-Dick, » and paired it with a siren, a nod to Pacific Northwest maritime culture. “It is hard to exaggerate how bad American coffee was,” Simon said.
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In recent years, Starbucks executives have begun trying to steer the company back to what once defined its success. “That identification meant only so much, and when there was a chance to make money on the SuperSonics, he sold them.” “In a very Starbucks way, Schultz would screw Seattle, stab it in the back,” Simon said. “And I understand that it is the duty of a CEO and executives, not to support the community, but to support shareholders, but that is not the way Starbucks positioned itself.” “Those desires that it trumpeted, that it cared about, were compromised at any moment that profit was at stake,” Simon said. “They were caught off guard and swept up in the post-pandemic movement where labor felt empowered during what was called the Great Resignation,” Kayes said.
Starbucks also sold a place people could identify with. Starbucks became part of that cultural moment. In the 1990s, the city was suddenly everywhere in popular culture. “Starbucks was one of the early companies that embraced growth at all costs — ‘we’ll forego profits, we’ll forego anything just to increase revenue,’” Kayes said. Schultz bought the company along with a group of investors in 1987 and pushed rapid expansion through the 1990s. What followed was one of the most aggressive growth stories in modern retail.
Menu expansion was one of the biggest changes. “Starbucks has lost its way in a couple of different paths,” Kayes said. Though Starbucks remains the biggest seller of coffee, it’s facing more competition. And in 2025, the Bearista cup caused a craze, with customers lining up overnight and, in some cases, brawling over it. Ordering a latte or macchiato carried a cultural meaning.
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