In part one of this blog we brought you 25 rich, steamy and delicious facts about Starbucks, the world’s most popular coffee brand. Here are 25 more perfectly roasted and heavily-caffeinated facts about Starbucks, including our vote for the nicest coffee store in the world!
1. Starbucks was originally based with a nautical theme to celebrate founding city Seattle’s seaport identity, so their logo also has a maritime design.
2. In fact, inspiration for the Starbucks logo came from a 16th century woodcut of a twin-tailed seafaring siren that was found in old marine archives.
3. There have been several minor changes to the logo over the decades, but it pretty much stays intact. However, the logo was altered from brown to its current green in 1987, after CEO Howard Schultz said the new color was “more affirming.”
4. While Peet’s Coffee & Tea is Starbucks biggest competitor, the two coffee companies are indelibly linked. In 1970, Starbucks co-founder Jerry Baldwin actually worked at the original Peet’s location in Berkeley. So when Baldwin and his friends and partners, Zev Siegel and Gordon Bowker, wanted to open their own coffee shop in Seattle in 1971, they purchased all of their raw coffee beans from Alfred Peet of Peet’s.
5. In fact, Baldwin actually bought the Peet’s coffee company in 1984, and then sold his shares of Starbucks in 1987, essentially jumping ship back to his coffee roots. Baldwin remained the chairman of Peet’s until 2001 when the company went public and was named the director.
6. We documented Starbucks less-than-successful foray into selling music, but they’ve also floundered with literary products. In fact, in the 1990s, Starbucks released a print version of Slate, Microsoft’s digital magazine. Instead of cancelling the literary project when sales were dismal, they started selling selections from Oprah’s Book Club in their stores in 1997, with similar results.
7. Since they still hadn’t learned their lesson, Starbucks took failure one step further when they published their own literary magazine called Joe in 1999. It lasted three issues before being cancelled.
8. While Starbucks isn’t exactly junk food, a few items on its menu are unmitigated dietary disasters. In fact, The Starbucks cinnamon chip scone has more calories than a McDonald’s quarter pounder! That cinnamon scone has with 480 calories, followed on the naughty list by their Starbucks cheese danish with 420 calories and 25 grams of fat, more than even the notorious McDonald’s Sausage McMuffin.
9. All of you Starbucks addicts will be encouraged by this breaking news: you can now order dinner and even alcoholic drinks at some Starbucks! That’s right, a few stores are trying out an evening dinner menu that includes culinary delights like truffle macaroni & cheese and artichoke & goat cheese flatbread, or even wine and beer.
10. Looking for a coffee date to go with your next visit to a Starbucks? Match.com partnered with the coffee giant to offer a “Meet at Starbucks” coupon for online daters on the site.
11. Always looking to innovate, Starbucks started experimenting with home delivery. As of 2015, customers can subscribe to a service that delivers coffee beans and other edibles right to their front door, either month-by-month or for a whole year.
12. Let’s talk Pumpkin Spice Latte! In fact, Starbucks most iconic drink was invented not by a team of baristas but a Stanford University basketball player named Peter Dukes. When Dukes worked at Starbucks in 2001, the work order to create a new seasonal drink for the fall landed on his desk. Since he was a big fan of pumpkin pie, he converted the same experience into a drink, and the Pumpkin Spice Latte was born!
13. But not all of their coffee creations hit big like the Pumpkin Spice Latter. Starbucks released The Chantico in 20045, which was advertised as “a drinkable dessert,” and consisted of 6-ounces of hot drinkable chocolate. Customers never embraced the sweet drink, and it was removed from the menu in 2006.
14. But the Pumpkin Spice Latte remains so popular that it’s a Starbucks superstar, with its own Twitter account and 109,000 followers! You can follow @TheRealPSL (The Real Pumpkin Spice Latte) on Twitter, or with its own custom hashtag, #PumpkinSpice.
15. Speaking of Starbucks on social media, it was first brand ever to reach 10 million likes on its page, and now has more than 36 million likes!
16. And more than 10 million people regularly use Starbucks mobile app, with an astounding 20% of Starbucks orders made ton customers’ mobile devices.
17. Most people realize they can order their Starbucks drink made with a variety of milk, like skim, 1%, whole and soymilk, but Starbucks now offers coconut milk as an alternative to dairy. According to company representatives, coconut milks was the second-most requested customer idea of all time, and appeases customers who are vegan, lactose-intolerant, allergic to dairy, or even on the Paleo diet.
18. Have you ever noticed that almost all of Starbucks café tables are round? They’re actually purposely designed like that so that solo patrons who sit alone won’t feel as lonely, since there aren’t clearly defined seating edges that would be empty like with square tables.
19. In 2013, Starbucks released limited edition gold cards – with real gold inside them! The cards cost a whopping $450, but sold out in mere seconds to ultra loyal (and crazy?) customers.
20. Starbucks Gold Card memberships are supposed to work like airline mileage programs with plenty of incentives for frequent purchases, but they’ve come under scrutiny for doing the opposite. In fact, to get a My Starbucks Rewards Gold Card, you need to earn 30 Stars in one year (awarded for certain purchase amounts.) But if you’re a Gold Card holder and stop using your card as frequently or your purchase volume goes down, the company actually “demotes” you to a Green Card, and takes away all of your Stars!
21. Not surprisingly, this caused an uproar that the most loyal customers were actually being over-monitored and punished, not rewarded. So a number of customers starting reloading their Stars with purchases of in-store goods, and then just returning them later to keep in the good graces of Starbucks.
22. We talked about Starbucks international presence in the first part of this blog, but there is nowhere that is more evident than in China, which now has 376 stores in Beijing alone! In fact, they expect to reach 3,400 stores in China by 2019.
23. But perhaps Starbucks got a little greedy when they opened a kiosk inside the revered and historic Forbidden City in 2000, a 600-year-old UNESCO World Heritage Site. The Chinese were revolted, and responded with mass protests and boycotts, though the Starbucks store didn’t close down and move out for a few years.
24. Starbucks is known for having extra responsive customer service. While they may not be able to grant every request and solve every problem, they company prides itself on listening to its customer base. If you have feedback, suggestions, or even an idea for a new drink, try calling Starbucks customer service at1 800-782-7282, or go to their customer service page and easily email the appropriate department.
https://customerservice.starbucks.com/app/contact/ask/
25. The nicest and most unique Starbucks in the world rests on the small tropical island of Boracay in the Philippines, often voted one of the nicest islands in the world. Halfway along its 4 miles of flawless powdery white sand beach, a Starbucks sits in a grove of palm trees, with white sand leading right up to the front door and a second and third story view of the ocean. It has a full menu of the usual Starbucks baked goods and hot and cold coffee drinks, and even icy air-conditioning!