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Starbucks Corporation has grown to become an easily recognized and often overpopulated corporation around the world. The first Starbucks was opened in 1971 and was founded by an English teacher Jerry Baldwin, a history teacher Zev Siegel and a writer Gordon Bowker. Originally all the store sold were coffee beans and high end brewing equipment.

In 1982 Howard Schultz joined the company and after a trip to Italy he was inspired by their espresso bars and suggested that the company also sell espresso beverages along with their beans sale. However the original owners of the company thought this was a bad idea so Schultz opened his own chain of espresso bars called Il Giornale in 1985. Then in 1987 the original owners sold their Starbucks chains to Schultz and he combined the two companies together. In this year Schultz also opened his first locations outside of Seattle in Vancouver, British Columbia and Chicago.

By the time Starbucks became a publicly traded company in 1992 Schultz had opened 165 stores. The first Starbucks outside of the North America was in Tokyo in 1996. Then in 1998 Starbucks bought the chain Seattle Coffee Company in London and acquired 60 new stores. In 2003 Starbucks bought Seattle's Best Coffee and brought their total number of stores to over 6400.

Starbucks was named after the first mate in Moby Dick as the founders were fond of the book. Starbucks is not content with their current number of stores and wishes to someday have over 40,000 stores around the world.

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