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Howard Schultz was born on July 19th, 1953 in the housing projects of Brooklyn, New York.
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Schultz went to college on a football scholarship to Nothern Michigan University. He recieved a bachelors degree in Communications and was the first person in his family to graduate college.
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Schultz graduates college and begins working for Xerox Corporation but later worked for a Swedish kitchen appliance company, Hammerplast.
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Schultz was sent to Seattle to a popular coffee shop called Starbucks for work. They were interested in buying their Swedish drip coffeemakers.
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He became so interested in Starbucks he begged the owners, Gerald Baldwin and Gordon Bowker, to be apart of the business claiming he saw great potential for expansion. The owners later named him the director of operations and marketing.
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Schultz traveled to Milan, Italy and was amazed at the many coffee bars on every street. He thought it would be a great oppurtunity for the company to bring the experience of a coffee bar to the United States.
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He came back from Italy in hopes of bringing the experience of a coffee bar to Starbucks but his bosses turned his idea down. Schultz then left Starbucks and started a rival company based upon his idea called II Giornale, which is Italian for "the daily".
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IL Giornale was very sucessful and 2 years later he bought Starbucks for $3.8 million from his previous bosses.
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By 1988, Starbucks had opened 12 stores in Chicago.
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Since Schultz has taken over as CEO, chairman and president, the company has grown to more than 16,000 stores around the world. Starbucks specializes in specialty coffee drinks as well as arabica beans from which it is made from.
