Starbucks Coffee Company: Transformation and Renewal

- What is special about Starbucks Coffee is that the company together with the Howard Schultz brought into USA, and after for all world, the Italian tradition of making coffee and more, they understood that is not only about coffee that makes special Italian espresso bars, but it’s the connection that is setting between the company and their customers.

- The success of company was given buy, as Schultz said, the capacity of company to tell a story, and after 35 years, in 2007, the company encounter the problems in telling his own story, that worried a lot Schultz.

- The financial indicators didn’t reveal that company had some problems. The company had a good growth year by year and, in 2007, was the largest coffee retailer in the world, but Schultz observations and instincts were not baseless, so he decided to act.

- As Schultz predict in 2003, for the company will be hard to become bigger but to maintain the same values that Starbucks Coffee had in the beginning.

- The point when the Starbucks’ problems start was when it became too big and hard to maintain the same kind of operation that the company had in the beginning and another problem that company faced was the large number of great competitors like McDonald’s Dunkin’ Donuts.

- On January 6, 2008 Schultz announced the Jim Donald, CEO at that time, and the senior leadership team that Jim will leave the company and that Schultz will return as CEO.

- The senior leadership team of the company started to evolve and people like Stephen Gillett and Jeff Hansberry joined the company.

- Schultz knew that he and his executive team will need to dig deep into company’s problems in order to solve them.

- Schultz also knew that one of the company issue is that it doesn’t have any digital activities. So with help of Michael Dell and Marc Benioff the company started successfully to solve its digital problems using platforms like IdeaStorm.com.

- The Starbuck’s digital network started to make visible results, so in 2011 more than three million people used Starbucks mobile application.

- One of the best steep made by company was to get into the social media networks like: Facebook, Twitter or Google+. That gives company the opportunity to establish a better relation with costumers. But the team that was responsible for social media formed with guys like: Chris Bruzzo or Adam Brotman. They reached the skyrocketed number of followers on Facebook: 27 million people. Also they used Twitter for a better communication with their customers.

- In order to develop its global network, Starbucks went into countries with big potential like Chine or India. But they stepped in carefully, investing in long term objectives of company like developing a good supply chain.

- The CEO of Starbuck lost the faith in the US Congress because in his opinion they (US Congress) put the ideology above the country and American people. So he has decided to support the small business that were essential for the welfare of US.

Personal opinion: I think that the main thing that Schultz done for the Starbucks Coffee was to renew the company’s main duty to offer for the customers not only coffee but the experience of an Italian coffee bars and to create a strong connection between company, customers and

partners. He anticipated that the company is not doing well and like Steve Jobs, Schultz returned to the company and helped it to not fall.