Today Starbucks has over 32,000 stores in 80 countries.

But things nearly fell apart in 2008.

This is the story of how Starbucks went from a single coffee bean shop to the world’s largest cafe chain.

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Starbucks began in 1971 when three friends Jerry Baldwin, Zev Siegl, and Gordon Bowker started up a store selling coffee beans and grounds. Until then American coffee consumers would drink cheap instant coffee at home or in diners.

Business went well as they expanded to 4 stores by 1981.

In 1982 Howard Shultz joined the company as the director of Marketing. While on a trip to Milan, Italy Shultz fell in love with the Italian coffee culture and wanted to bring it back to America.

He tried to convince the founders, but they were happy with the way things were.

In 1985 Shultz left Starbucks and started Il Giornale where he would sell Italian style coffee.

Two years later Shultz and a group of investors bought Starbucks for $3.8 million.

Schultz rebranded Il Giornale with the Starbucks name, and began to expand across America.

By the time the company IPOd in 1992 there were 165 Starbucks stores.

By 1996 they had 1,000 stores in locations that included Japan and Singapore.

3 years later they opened their 2000th location.

In 2000 The company had 3,500 stores and sales reached $2 billion. Shultz decided to step down as CEO to become Executive Chairman of the board.

Over the next seven years the number of stores would quadruple to over 15,000.

Between 2000 and 2007 they opened an average of 1,500 stores a year and sales went from $2 billion to $9.4 billion.

But there was a problem. All this expansion meant a watering down of the experience.

When Shultz stepped down as CEO the new management lost track of what made the company so successful. They were to focused on the financials. The market had become saturated. In order for one Starbucks store to grow they had to steal customers from a neighbouring store.

In search of greater profits, they replaced their coffee machines with automatic machines. This meant they could make coffees faster they killed the romance and theatre of watching your barista make your coffee.

They also expanded into food and even started selling CDs with music from their stores.

Then the financial crisis of 2008 hit. The company’s growth turned negative and same store sales declined for the first time in history.

In order to save his beloved company Shultz returned as CEO and began making drastic changes.

He stopped the rapid expansions. He stopped selling breakfast sandwiches. The company went back to its founding principles. Which was all about making great coffee. He closed 600 stores and laid off 6,700 people. Starbucks began grinding beans instore again bringing back their iconic aroma. Shultz threw out the automatic coffee machines and even closed every store in America for half a day to retrain 135,000 baristas.

The store closures were all over the news, but it sent an important message. Starbucks was returning to its roots of making high quality coffee.

Shultz’s efforts were a success. Starbucks stock rose 143% in 2009 compared to 26% for the S&P.

Shultz turned the company around as they added 3,000 additional locations by 2017 ending the year with 28,000 stores.

Shultz stayed on as CEO until 2018. Their new CEO Kevin Johnson wants to expand to 37,000 stores.

Today Starbucks is worth nearly $100 billion and employs more than 380,000 people.