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Four Cups of Starbucks
Fuqua’s Start-up Cafe proudly serves Starbucks coffee. MBA’s crowd the counter, getting their fixes of caffeine at $4 a pop. Outside of Fuqua, Starbucks seem to be everywhere. Stores can be found around the globe and in the US, they are located surprisingly close to other stores. Two of the top Starbucks are within fifteen yards of each other. What it is about the product and the company that is irresistible to more than forty million customers?
Starbucked: A Double Tall Tale of Caffeine, Commerce and Culture explores the rise of the Starbucks Corporation and the caffeine-crazy culture that fueled it success. This is a story of how a small Seattle coffeehouse took a standard commodity, shaped it into a luxury product and made it synonymous with a cultural experience. The book includes anecdotes about familiar products and stores, and covers free trade and global issues related to coffee production.
It’s not about the Coffee: Leadership experiences from a life at Starbucks. The founding director of Starbucks International describes the strategies he used to build Starbucks into the success it is today. Behar helped establish the Starbucks culture, which stresses people over profits. He shares his ideas and skills that transported the company from a regional outlet to global brand. The voice of experience and in-house examples from a popular company provide a foundation for a discussion of leadership skills.
The Starbucks Experience: 5 principles for turning ordinary into extraordinary. Consultant Joseph Michelli studied the Starbucks Corporation and extracted five principles underlying the company’s success:
- Make it your own
- Everything matters
- Surprise and delight
- Embrace resistance
- Leave your mark
He also describes how to reach out to consumers, communities and workers, how to seize growth opportunities in every market, and how to custom-design a fully satisfying experience.
Grande Expectations: A Year in the Life of Starbucks’ Stock is a book about the stock market and corporate finance. Using Starbucks as a real life case, the author, a financial journalist, demystifies Wall Street by illustrating how investor expectations and company performance create investment opportunities. Fuqua faculty member Rebecca Zarutskie wrote an extensive review of this book for the Duke Magazine.
© Reviewer: Meg Trauner & Ford Library – Fuqua School of Business. All rights reserved.
Tags: Company history, Leadership