When Madagascar drifted away from the continent of Africa 165 million years ago, both land masses had essentially the same animal species.  In the ensuing 165 million years of separation they evolved at different rates, inside of different environmental pressures, under attack from different natural predators.  Later, when the two land masses were compared side by side the differences were striking.  It was as if scientists were comparing two different worlds.  Such as it is with the arrival of Starbucks in the Schiphol airport.  

 

Starbucks has arrived in a country with a deep coffee culture.  They arrive with their sugary, syrupy, coffee drinks; their ventis, their grandes; their friendly, lightning fast service; your name scrawled on a paper cup with a black marker; up-selling a muffin or a CD sampler; double-cupped-skinny-vanilla-whipped-grande-mochas.  What the hell is a Frappuccino™ anyway?  All of these feel as natural to the patron of the Dutch coffee scene as an egg-laying, duck billed, platypus mammal would have seemed to a zoologist stepping onto the shores of Madagascar for the first time.  At first glance it would seem as neither coffee culture has anything in common, but when digging into the history of Starbucks you quickly learn that if it wasn't for the Dutch coffee culture and specifically, if it wasn't for one Dutch man in particular, there might not be a Starbucks today.

 

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The man who would become the "spiritual grandfather" of Starbucks was born in Alkmaar, Netherlands in 1920.  Alfred Peet learned the coffee trade while cleaning the machinery and running errands at his father's small coffee roaster.  During the war he worked in a forced labor camp in Frankfurt where he claims to have learned the art of preventative maintenance for machines from a German guard, a skill that he kept with him his entire life.  After the war he moved to London to apprentice at a coffee and tea company.  He later traveled to Indonesia where he worked as a tea taster, before immigrating to San Francisco in 1955.  

 

When he arrived in America the Americans were drinking swill for coffee.  "I came to the richest country in the world, so why are they drinking the lousiest coffee?" he said.  He worked for coffee importer E.A Johnson & Co for several years before heading out on his own.  He opened Peet's Coffee in Berkeley California in 1966 in a neighborhood that would eventually house such gourmet luminaries as Alice Water's Chez Panisse.  His mission from the start was to offer the best coffee and educate Americans through personal instruction on the qualities of a fine dark roasted bean and a good cup of coffee.  He could be found in his store, daily, giving personal mentoring to the curious.    

 

Three of the Americans that came to be mentored were college students from Seattle named Jerry Baldwin, Gordon Bowker, and Zev Siegl.  All three had previously traveled in Europe and became enchanted by the dark roasted coffees they discovered there.  Back in Seattle, someone gave Baldwin a bag of Peet's coffee and soon the trio was in Peet's store learning the art of coffee from the Dutch roasting master.  Siegl even became an employee and worked under Peet as a roaster.

 

Over time the three opened their own store in Seattle under the guidance of Peet.  Starbucks opened in the bustling Pike's Place Market in 1971 on Seattle's waterfront.  With Peet’s blessing, Starbucks was essentially a carbon copy of the Peet's Coffee in Berkeley; from the look and layout of the store, to the personal tutoring to curious customers, even the beans were merely repackaged Peet's beans.  Starbucks found a thriving business in the Seattle market and after two years, Peet encouraged the trio to start roasting and selling their own beans.  He helped them buy their first roaster, a used unit direct from the Netherlands.

 

At this time, Starbucks still adhered to the Dutch model set out by Peet.  Search the world for the best beans, roast them in small batches with great care, and sell them to knowledgeable clientele who took them home, ground them, and brewed coffee in their houses.  It wasn't possible to buy a cup of coffee at Starbucks, let alone a venti vanilla creme frappuccino.  

 

Success attracts attention and soon a New Yorker named Howard Schultz, Vice President and General Manager of U.S. Operations for Hammarplast, started poking around the store wondering why a small store like Starbucks was selling more of his coffee makers than the largest department stores on the West Coast.  He immediately fell for the potential for growth that he saw in Starbucks.  The Starbucks owners were less impressed.  They didn't want a head of marketing who hadn't grown with company, somebody who didn't share their core values.  The only thing Baldwin and Bowker wanted to maximize was the quality of the beans.  Schultz wanted to expand Starbucks across the country and make everyone rich.  It took this high-powered New Yorker a year of convincing before they relented and hired him.  

 

Schultz brought the idea of getting espresso machines and selling coffee drinks in the store.  His epiphany came during a business trip to Milan Italy where he instantly saw that the coffee house could be the center of a community's social life.  He came back to Seattle with his ideas but didn't make much headway with his bosses.  Unbeknownst to Schultz, Alfred Peet had just announced that he was looking to sell his chain of stores in California and the Starbucks owners were scrambling to raise the cash to buy.  Schultz's idea would have to wait.  A lot of Schultz's ideas had to wait.  He had fundamentally different ideas for Starbucks than the current owners.  After struggling with this difference for three and a half years Schultz left the company to form his own coffee chain called Il Giornale and grew it to a $1.5 million business.  

Two years of running Starbucks and Peet’s simultaneously in two different cities was wearing down Starbucks owners.  Siegel had already dropped out because of burnout and now Baldwin and Bowker were facing the same fate.  Bowker wanted to cash out and focus on Red Hook Ale, a local brewery he started.  Baldwin wanted to choose either Peet's or Starbucks and made the decision in a "30 second conversation" with his wife.  "Peet's was the original and it was better," he said.  

 

With Starbucks on the market, Howard gathered some investors and won the bid.  He merged the existing six stores with his three Il Giornale stores and branded them all as Starbucks.  It was only now that Starbucks was finally cut from it's historical roots and started morphing into a completely different animal; beans created the Dutch way, served the Italian way, marketed the American way.  

 

Starbucks began an aggressive growth plan that continues until today.  Having first spread across America at lightning speed now Starbucks is focusing internationally.  In 2001, it was the first company in decades to open more new stores than even the ubiquitous McDonald's.  Today they have some 13,000 coffee shops in more than 35 countries.  

 

Noticeably absent from their roster list are the countries of Netherlands and Italy.  That is, until now.  2007 saw the opening of three stores in Schiphol and rumors circulating that Starbucks employees are shopping for real estate to set up more.  The Netherlands seems to be squarely in Starbucks sites now.  

 

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Alfred Peet died in August of 2007, just months before Starbucks opened its two stores in Schiphol's public shopping mall.  One can only imagine how he'd feel about Starbucks, the company he originally inspired, returning to his homeland.  Peet wasn't a fan of large coffee chains.  He felt it was impossible to ensure the quality of the beans when a company has hundreds of stores to supply.  They would have no choice but to buy in bulk, from many different growers, in many different countries.  They would have to use large plantations, use special hybrid beans, pesticides, and resort to other methods that would affect the taste of the bean.

"I'd rather see 1,000 fellows running their own stores than what we have now," Peet told The San Francisco Chronicle in 2001.  Which, after all, is what we already have in the Netherlands.  

 

Peet must have smiled however on Feb 26 of this year.  With slumping sales and a drifting customer base, Howard Schultz ordered the unprecedented move to shut all 7,100 U.S. based stores for three hours in the afternoon so everyone in the company could go through coffee training.  In a letter to staff, Schultz said: "Starbucks partners will have an opportunity to connect and deepen their passion for coffee with the ultimate goal of transforming the customer experience."  Sounds a lot like the training the original Starbucks owners got thirty-five years ago from the Dutch master himself.  

 

 

 

 

 

Copyright © 2008 Reed Sprague