Howard Schultz From Sixty Minutes
Sixty Minutes did a segment on Howard Schultz of Starbucks yesterday and it is damn good. Have a look.
What I would have asked him a bit more about is how did he manage to convince the investors to buy that 6-store chain at a time when there was no market for coffee in America and also the investors on how did they evaluate Starbucks before agreeing to put money into this venture.
Starbucks needs visiting and revisiting over and again at this stage of the game … “The Timer” makes it imperative that we understand how to build scalable businesses like Starbucks.
Have you ever looked at the McMenamins pub business in Oregon and Washington?
http://www.mcmenamins.com/
They have a hits business with a huge organic following. They have limited their growth to an area where they can control quality and market perception to avoid being seen as yet another corporate food eatery. But this is another example of the kind of business concept that could be reproduced elsewhere if the same care is taken with the business’s community role.