Howard Shultz, the entrepreneur who went on to find fame with Starbucks, America's favorite coffee shop, was raised in the housing projects in Brooklyn, New York. Schultz was a high school athlete who later attended Northern Michigan University on an athletic scholarship. He graduated in 1975 and began working as an appliance salesman, peddling European coffeemakers – eventually becoming a sales director.
It was during his work as a salesman that he came across the Starbucks Coffee tea and Spice Company in Seattle, Washington. He noticed that the company bought more coffeemakers than Macy's, which sparked his interest. Schultz later obtained a job working with the original Starbucks team. At the time, Starbucks only sold coffee beans.
After feeling a connection between the Starbucks company and the people who love its beans, he got the idea for selling coffee drinks after visiting an Italian coffee bar. Despite the company's initial hesitation, Schultz was allowed to open one coffee bar in Seattle. It was a whirlwind success, serving hundreds of people per day. Still, the owners were unimpressed.
Schultz left the company, opening his own coffee bar chain in 1985 known as Il Giornale. After a couple of years, Schultz reached out for investors and successfully purchased Starbucks, merging his business with the Starbucks brand. The rest is coffee history. Schultz had claimed his rank on the Forbes 400 by 2006, and by 2013, he was on the Forbes list of billionaires, coming in as the 931st richest person on the planet – all from his coffee ideas and his commitment to stick behind his dream.
One of the guiding principles of the Starbucks line is that it sources its coffee from the highest-quality Arabic beans. This gives every cup of Starbucks coffee a consistent taste that America and the rest of the civilized world guzzle by the giant mug full. Despite its additional price tag, Starbucks remains the top seller in the world for coffee drinks.
Starbucks owns more than 21,000 stores around the world and has a market cap of approximately $60 billion. Each and every day of the week, two or three more stores are added to Starbucks lineup somewhere on the planet. Nearly a quarter million people work for Starbucks across its chain.
Schultz came out in 2013 in support of gay marriage and has championed several other causes during his tenure as a top-rated entrepreneur and businessman.