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Building the dream of Starbucks 1 Howard Schultz is not a household name to most North Americans but those living in urban or suburban communities know his company: the specialty coffee retailer Starbucks. With impressive velocity Starbucks has grown into the largest coffee roaster and retailer of specialty coffee in North America in a span of only a decade. By 2000 its coffee houses could be found in more than 3000 locations worldwide; even President Bill Clinton was seen in a snapshot with a Starbucks brew in his hand. According to the US weekly magazine Newsweek Schultz's merging of the three Cs coffee commerce and community surely ranks as one of the '90s greatest retail successes. 2 Schultz was born in 1953 and grew up in an extremely poor section of the Brooklyn borough of New York City. His mother worked as a receptionist and his father held a variety of jobs none of which offered decent pay or medical insurance. When Schultz was seven his father lost his job as a delivery driver when he broke his ankle in an accident. In the ensuing months the family was literally too poor to put food on the table. 3 During his youth Schultz was hounded by the shame of his family's "working poor" status. He escaped the hot Brooklyn summer one year to attend camp but would not return when he learned it was for low-income families. He was teased by boys in high school and ashamed to tell his girlfriend where he lived. The harsh memories of those early times stayed with him for the rest of his life. 4 Sports became an escape from the shame of poverty. Schultz earned an athletic scholarship to Northern Michigan University in 1975. He was the first person in his family to graduate from college as none of his predecessors had training beyond vocational school. 5 The bud of inspiration for his phenomenal coffee business began growing in a 1983 visit to Milan Italy. Schultz conceived of a new American way of life in the coffee bars of Milan. He sought to recreate such forums for people in the US to start their days or visit with friends. In 1987 at the age of 34 Schultz organized a group of investors and purchased the company that had formerly employed him the Starbucks Coffee Company in Seattle which he restructured as the Starbucks Corporation. 6 The public verdict was overwhelmingly positive. Schultz's premium coffee bars were an instant success acting as a stimulus of rapid growth and expansion not only for Starbucks but also for the coffee industry around the world. In 1992 Starbucks became the first specialty coffee company to go public affirming its magnitude and prospects. 7 Starbucks' first major venture outside of the northwestern part of the nation was Chicago where the company's specialty sales division developed new business with department stores and established Starbucks coffee bars adjacent to the business sections in national bookstores. Starbucks also formed a partnership with PepsiCo to create and distribute a new ready-to-drink coffee-based beverage and entered into a licensing agreement with Kraft Foods. As a company seeking to develop with a multilateral approach Starbucks even developed a relationship with the music industry to sell Starbucks-tailored CDs of classical brass and orchestral music in the coffee bars. 8 When Starbucks opened its first store in New York City it was a homecoming for Schultz but he did not act like the head of the reigning royalty of coffee he had become. The New York Times commented "The soft-spoken Mr. Schultz has barely a trace of a New York accent and a timid almost apologetic manner." 9 Schultz has also attracted considerable attention with his unconventional employment policies. He wanted to give Starbucks' employees both a philosophical and a financial stake in the business. He decreed that employees who worked the quota of 20 hours a week or more were eligible for medical dental and optical coverage as well as for stock options. At a time when other companies were trimming benefits as a cost-cutting measure Schultz who grew up in a family without any medical coverage was vocal in his belief that genuinely caring about your employees is critical to building a sturdy workforce. "Service is a lost art in America" he told The New York Times. "I think people want to do a good job but if they are treated poorly they get beaten down. We want to provide our people with dignity and self-esteem and we can't do that with lip service." Starbucks stipulates that every employee with at least half-time hours can receive health-care benefits. Schultz credits the utilization of such a benefits policy as the key to the company's growth because it has given Starbucks a more dedicated workforce and an extremely high level of customer service. The chain also achieved a dramatically low turnover rate half that of the average fast food business. This creates a significant numerical payoff for Starbucks since each new employee represents an expenditure of $3000 in recruiting and training costs and productivity losses. 10 Schultz has remained firmly committed to employee and community enrichment a philosophy which is embedded in the very core of Starbucks' business culture. He has never grown accustomed to success enough to forget his working-class roots. He dedicated his book to the memory of his father whom he had once spoken harshly to and accused of a lack of ambition. They were words Schultz would regret the rest of his life a reminiscence he wished he could scrub from his memory. His father received the diagnosis of lung cancer and died before his son became a millionaire. Schultz once told his audience that his crowning success was that "I got to build the kind of company that my father never got to work for." 霍华德·舒尔茨创造“星巴克”之梦 霍华德·舒尔茨这个名字在北美并非家喻户晓，不过居住在城市或市郊社区的人都知道他的公司：特色咖啡零售商星巴克。区区十年间，星巴克已凭借惊人的速度成长为北美最大的咖啡豆烤制商和特色咖啡零售商。截至2000年，它旗下的咖啡店已经遍布世界三千多个角落。就连美国前总统比尔·克林顿也被人拍到手捧星巴克咖啡。根据美国杂志《新闻周刊》的报道，舒尔茨将“3C”概念——咖啡、商业和社区——融为一体，这已然使星巴克名列20世纪90年代最成功的零售商之列。 舒尔茨出生于1953年，在纽约市布鲁克林区一个极其贫困的街区长大。他母亲是一位前台接待员，父亲则从事过很多不同的工作，但其中没有哪一份工作给他支付过体面的酬劳或购买过医疗保险。舒尔茨七岁时，他父亲在一次事故中扭断了脚踝，失去了他当时做送货司机的工作。在接下来的几个月中，他们家真的是穷到了揭不开锅的地步。 青年时代的舒尔茨一直由于其家庭“穷困工人阶层”地位所蒙受的耻辱而备受精神折磨。有一年他逃离布鲁克林炎热的夏天去参加夏令营，但当他得知这个夏令营是专门为低收入家庭的学生开办的时候，就再也不愿意去参加了。中学时他遭受到了男孩子们的奚落，也羞于告诉女朋友自己住在哪里。这些早年痛苦的记忆一直伴随着他一生。 体育运动成了他逃避穷困这一耻辱的方式。1975年，舒尔茨获得了北密歇根大学体育奖学金。他也是他家族中第一个从大学毕业的人,因为他的前辈中没有一个人接受过比职业学校培训更高的教育。 舒尔茨令人瞩目的咖啡生意的最初灵感源于1983年他对意大利米兰的造访。在米兰的咖啡馆里，舒尔茨设想了一种新型的美国式生活方式。他寻求在美国重现那种米兰式的交往平台，使人们能以那种方式开始新的一天或与朋友小聚。1987年，当舒尔茨34岁时，他组织了投资团队并购买下了他原先工作的公司，即西雅图的“星巴克咖啡公司”，将其重组为“星巴克集团”。 公众的反映出奇地好。舒尔茨创建的高端咖啡厅立即获得了成功，这刺激了星巴克乃至全球整个咖啡产业的迅速成长和发展。1992年，星巴克成为第一家公开上市的特色咖啡经营公司，确证了公司的发展规模和前景。 星巴克迈出美国西北部进行投资的第一站是在芝加哥。在那里，公司分管特色销售的部门开创了与百货商店联手以及在国家书店毗邻营业区的地方开设星巴克咖啡吧的经营新渠道。同时，星巴克还和百事可乐公司建立了伙伴关系，研发并销售一款即开即饮的新型咖啡饮品，他们与卡夫食品公司也签订了一份许可协议。作为一家寻求与多方进行合作而发展的企业，星巴克甚至与音乐产业合作，在咖啡吧里销售为星巴克量身定做的古典铜管乐及管弦乐激光唱片。 星巴克在纽约开第一家分店对于舒尔茨来说是回归故里，但他并没有摆出一副咖啡行业王者的姿态。《纽约时报》评论说：“舒尔茨先生说话温和，几乎没有一丝纽约口音的痕迹，而且他举止腼腆，甚至谦卑。” 舒尔茨与众不同的员工政策也引起了人们的广泛关注。他希望给星巴克的员工提供不仅是经营理念上的而且也是经济上的参与公司成败的机会。他规定，员工完成每周20小时的工作定额或超过这一定额，就有资格享受医疗、牙齿及眼部保健方面的福利，也能享受股票优先认购权。就在其他企业通过削减福利来节省成本之时，舒尔茨，虽然生长在一个没有任何医疗福利保障的家庭，却仍然坦言自己的信仰，即真诚地关心员工对建立一个坚实的员工队伍是至关重要的。“服务在美国是一门缺失的艺术，”他对《纽约时报》如此说道，“我相信人们愿意把工作做好，但如果遭受的待遇很差，他们就会受到打击。我们希望给予员工尊严与自尊，而这一点光靠动动嘴皮子是做不到的。”星巴克规定，每一位工时超过半工制的员工都能享受医疗保障福利。舒尔茨相信这一福利政策的切实施行是企业成长的关键，因为此举已使星巴克拥有了更加尽心尽力的工作团队以及至高水准的客户服务。这一连锁反应也使员工的流动率极低，几乎只有快餐行业平均流动率的一半。在经营数字上，这一政策则给星巴克带来了显著回报，因为每招募和培训一位新员工及其生产率损失所产生的费用就高达三千美元。 舒尔茨一直坚定地致力于员工及社区发展，这一理念已经根植于星巴克的核心企业文化当中。他从未因为太过习惯于成功而忘却自己劳动阶层的根基。他把自己的一本书献给了父亲以表纪念。他曾经对父亲说过尖刻的话，甚至曾指责他缺乏上进心，这些话让舒尔茨后悔终生，他期望能够将这些回忆从记忆中抹去。他的父亲被诊断出了肺癌，在儿子成为百万富翁之前就离去了。舒尔茨曾经告诉他的听众，他最重要的成功在于“我创立了一个我父亲从来都不曾有福气为之工作的那种企业。” |
