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From its first store, opened in Seattle in 1971, to its current 7,521 self-operated and 5,647 licensed stores, almost one-third of which are in countries other than the United States, Starbucks has established itself as one of the major corporate success stories of the late 20th century.

From the very beginning it was Starbucks (Coffee, Tea and Spices), named for the first mate in Moby Dick. The original small bean roaster and retail store was started by three partners, Jerry Baldwin, Zev Siegel, and Gordon Bowker, with the strong support of Alfred Peet, from whom they originally bought their beans. After six years on Western Avenue, the store moved to Pike Place Market where it lived quietly for another six years. In the original logo, which can now only be found in this original store, the siren was topless - which caused some consternation when the company briefly brought back this logo in September 2006 to celebrate its 35th anniversary.

In 1982 Howard Schultz brought a new vibrancy to the company. Having experienced the espresso and coffeehouse culture of Italy, he envisioned developing and evolving a similar coffeehouse culture in the United States. The original partners opposed this idea: to them, coffee was something to be brewed and enjoyed at home. Temporarily they parted paths while Schultz opened Il Giornale, the first true United States-grown coffee bar chain. In the meantime, the original partners bought Peet's Coffee & Tea, where Jerry Baldwin works to this day as "Roastmaster Emeritus".

In 1987, the original partners sold Starbucks to Schultz, who promptly merged it with Il Giornale to create the Starbucks corporation. At the time it had 17 stores in total, but this would quickly change as Starbucks started opening outlets outside Seattle that same year, even opening one in Vancouver, Canada. By the time Starbucks became a publicly traded company in 1992, it had already grown to 165 outlets. In 1996 Starbucks opened its first non North American store in Tokyo; and two years later it entered Great Britain by purchasing the Seattle Coffee Company, swallowing up its 60 stores and rebranding them as Starbucks. More chain acquisitions included Seattle's Best Coffee, Torrefazione Italia, and Diedrich Coffee.

But there were still no Starbucks stores in San Francisco. Baldwin had negotiated a non-competition agreement with Schultz to keep Starbucks out of San Francisco for ten years after the 1987 sale. To this day, Peet's Coffee & Tea remains more popular than Starbucks in the San Francisco area.

Even behind China, Eastern Europe still represents a new corporate frontier. While Starbucks has had stores in Beijing and even inside the Forbidden Palace since the beginning of the new millennium, it has only just penetrated the Romanian market with its most recent two outlets in Bucharest.

Since its first introduction in 2000, fair trade coffee has represented an increasing percentage of Starbucks sales. Currently, free trade coffee accounts for 3.7 percent of all Starbucks coffee sales.

Last year, Starbucks was voted the 16th best company to work for in the United States. Not bad for a little shop out of Seattle!

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