The Ledger
Every statement that passed quotation and attribution checks. Mix any filter with any other: certainty 1/5, debate potential 5/5, or both at once.
why aren't all 62 resolved? a statement only gets an assessment when the public record can support or contradict it. opinions and what-ifs never can, and 1 checkable ones are still open, waiting for their date. predictions held up or didn't; assertions are supported or contradicted. on every card: ▮▮▮▮▮ certainty · ▮▮▮▮▮ debate potential. speakers are clickable
Schultz: An Il Giornale investor tried to hijack the 1987 Starbucks acquisition
“Jerry gave me about, I think he gave me 90 days to raise 3.8 million dollars. Around the second month, he just came to me and said, where are you with all this? And I think I had about half of it raised. I might have fibbed a bit and said I had a little bit mo…”
Schultz: Starbucks developed hubris and shifted to playing defense over time
“The worst thing that could happen to a company is believing that you are incapable of doing anything but succeeding, and you deserve the success. But if you start playing defense and don't have the offensive mind, it's not going to go well. And I think over ti…”
Schultz: Mobile Order & Pay is Starbucks' biggest Achilles' heel
“It is the biggest Achilles heel for Starbucks. And it's not even a close second.”
Schultz: No desire or intent to return as Starbucks CEO
“The first thing I want to say is I've made it clear to the Starbucks board, Howard Schultz, and I've made it clear to Loxman, Howard Schultz has no desire or intent to return as CEO of Starbucks.”
Schultz: Post-founder companies lose entrepreneurial DNA and play defense out of fear
“Founder leaves, I'm not talking about me, it's you, historically, and companies lose not only the extent of the entrepreneurial DNA, but they lose the ability to be on offense. And the worst thing that a company can do, like a sports team, is start playing def…”
Schultz: Starbucks was seven months from insolvency in 2008
“I went up there, and I laid it out. Chapter and verse. I think we have seven months left. We are going to be insolvent.”
Schultz: Starbucks Replaced Entire Executive Team Except General Counsel
“He was right, except for one, the general counsel. They were all gone.”
Schultz: Starbucks Asia delivers higher brand experience than US stores
“The interesting thing to me today is that the Asian business is operating at a much higher level
Of the soft side of Starbucks than we are in the U S”
Schultz: Starbucks would not have succeeded under a franchise model
“I never believed that we could build, maintain, and elevate the culture of the company, which I viewed as the thing in a franchise system, where we had individual franchisees who had their own subculture. And so even though there was pressure early on because …”
Schultz: Straight espresso is Starbucks' number one selling beverage in Italy
“Two, three years later, what do you think the number one beverage is? It's espresso. For Starbucks. Straight espresso. Espresso is the number one beverage.”
Schultz: Starbucks underestimated the public groundswell for unionization after COVID missteps
“And I think the company made some early mistakes. Some of which were COVID related. Again, no textbook had to deal with COVID issues, health issues, safety issues. And then I think underestimated the groundswell of public sentiment for this movement in America…”
Schultz: Starbucks introduced the caffè latte to America without trademarking it
“The other thing I didn't do is we introduced cafe latte to the, to America. We didn't trademark it. You know, we trademarked Frappuccino later on, but we didn't trademark cafe latte.”
Schultz: Starbucks Pricing Has Become a Problem Amid Recent Inflation
“There certainly was a fair amount of discussion all the time about the sensitivity of the price points, and I think in later years, maybe in the last couple years, given the consumer inflationary time, I think it's become a bit of a problem.”
Schultz: Previous Starbucks leadership diluted coffee quality to maximize yield
“Because the previous administration had done things that diluted the integrity of coffee to maximize yield.”
Schultz: Starbucks suspended buybacks to invest over $2B into partners
“The day I came back, and I knew what the market would do, is I announced that we were suspending the stock buybacks, and stock went down. I expected it, and I announced that we were going to take basically the money we were using to stock buybacks for the year…”
Schultz: Coca-Cola dismissed Starbucks ready-to-drink pitch in under 30 minutes
“The Coke meeting was a meeting lasted less than 30 minutes. I can't remember who I met with. They dismissed me didn't view Starbucks or, didn't understand what I was trying to do and didn't give me much time to even explain it.”
Schultz: Selling in Costco Directly Increased Starbucks Retail Store Sales
“In fact, putting Starbucks in Costco, we were able to measure directly
The increase in volume in the stores on the east side as a result of the proximity to the Costco store.”
Gilbert: Starbucks gift card deposits rival top 10% of US banks
“If Starbucks were a bank, and you treated the gift cards as deposits, it would be in the top 10% by deposits of banks in the United States.”
Schultz: McDonald's and fast-food coffee copycats expanded the total coffee market
“Well, not only that, but every food company, every retail food business from McDonald's on, took a page out of Starbucks, went to school on us, put espresso machines in their stores, and started doing coffee beverages. That also expanded the market.”
Schultz: Bill Gates did not know his father saved the Starbucks acquisition
“Bill did not know the whole story. He didn't know any of it. He didn't know what his father had done for me. He's hearing it for the first time.”
Schultz: Starbucks and Pepsi launched bottled Frappuccino via 50/50 JV
“Subsequently, Craig Weatherup and I, on a napkin, I swear, shook hands and created a multi-billion dollar business For Pepsi and Starbucks and a fifty-fifty JV and bottle Frappuccino.”
Gilbert: Starbucks' 1991 Employee Stock Option Grants Have Appreciated 800x
“So those initial grants, the strike price was six dollars per share. Today, as we speak, the share price is 77 dollars, but there have been six splits since then, which comes out to a 64 X. So that initial grant has 800 X'd since even the part-time employees a…”
Schultz: Starbucks spent zero dollars on marketing in its early days
“We didn't spend any money on marketing. Zero. It was no money for market in the cup. The iconic cup became a badge of honor because people were doing something that was new and novel and walking in the street with it”
Schultz: 10-11 daily customers per store could reverse negative comps
“And then I had this economic formula of how many customers it would take per store to turn comps around. And the number was low. It's like less than 10 per day or 11 per day.”
Schultz: Starbucks baristas consistently make 100,000 different beverage variations
“I think I, the number that people use inside the company is a 100,000 different variations of beverages that are being made consistently. A 100,000 different beverages.”
Gilbert: Starbucks holds roughly $1.8B in customer gift card float
“Right now, at any given time, there's about 1.8 billion dollars of cash that Starbucks has gotten in the form effectively of as an advance from customers that Starbucks can use to operate.”
Schultz: Consulted daily with Michael Dell before returning as Starbucks CEO
“On that holiday, a friend of mine
Not, I didn't know he was there, but it was Michael Dell was there. And I must've talked to him almost every day about the transformation of Starbucks. And he was going through a similar thing at Dell almost at the same time. …”
Schultz: Starbucks store model targeted 2:1 sales-to-investment and 20% operating profit
“The model basically was a sales to investment ratio of two to one. And a operating profit of 20%.”
Schultz: Belinda Wong is Starbucks' most valuable person
“Maybe the most valuable person in the company, from my view.”
Schultz: Childhood trauma led to strict zero-debt rule at Starbucks
“No, it was totally my childhood. My parents were always in debt. Bill collectors were always calling. And no, there was, we never had any debt the entire time. Never.”
Schultz: Starbucks Granted 14% of Base Pay in Stock Options Pre-IPO
“Ultimately we gave 14% of everyone's base pay in the form of stock options at the end of the year based on the strike price. And I had to do it the year before the IPO.”
Schultz: Starbucks should have secured an exclusive on the modern sip lid
“Howard Schultz should have said to them, I want an exclusive on that lid. Because that lid became the standard for the world. If I would have just understood that.”
Gilbert: Starbucks Offered Healthcare to Part-Time Workers and Same-Sex Partners in 1988
“So in 1988, the health benefits roll out even to Part-time employees, including gay couples in domestic partnerships. I believe the first of its kind. That was a 33 store company at that point.”
Schultz: Starbucks ran into financial trouble after acquiring Peet's Coffee
“Now between 83 and 85, Jerry Baldwin, because of his love of Pete's and his relation with Alfred Pete, had an opportunity for Starbucks to acquire Pete's Coffee Company. And they did. Unfortunately, Starbucks buys Pete's, and they get into financial trouble.”
Schultz: Starbucks originally resold Peet's Coffee in Starbucks bags in 1971
“Now what is not known is that when Starbucks opened in the Pike Place Market in 1971, they were using Pete's Coffee. No one knows that. That's new. Because they were not roasting coffee. So they were bringing coffee from San Francisco to Seattle. They were not…”
Gilbert: Customers load roughly $14B annually onto Starbucks gift cards
“In terms of velocity, about fourteen billion dollars a year gets loaded onto gift cards.”
Schultz: Starbucks secured China approval to insure employees' parents and grandparents
“Belinda decided that she could go to the government and go to an insurance company and come back to Starbucks and get government approval for Starbucks to do the first, do something had never been done before and provide health insurance to the parents and gra…”
Schultz: Starbucks beverage retail achieved roughly 80% gross margins early on
“The ability to source and roast coffee And put that through the supply chain of a beverage gave us probably at the time an 80% gross margin.”
Schultz: Goldman Sachs rejected leading Starbucks' 1992 IPO for being too small
“We got turned down by Goldman Sachs.”
Schultz: Third-wave coffee competitors expanded the market rather than taking Starbucks' business
“There has always been stories that all these competitors were going to steal business from Starbucks, but from. 1983 to all the way today, the consumption, especially coffee is still a small amount relative to the macro opportunity. So all those people have ex…”
Schultz: Costco Co-Founder Jeff Brotman Invested in Starbucks' 1987 Buyout
“First, Jeff Brotman invested in Starbucks in the round to buy Starbucks.”
Gilbert: Starbucks profits surged from $315M in 2008 to $945M in 2010
“Your low point in 2008 profits were three hundred and fifteen million, and by 20 10 they were nine hundred and forty five million.”
Schultz: Starbucks never had a negative comp month before 2008
“Never had a negative comp month in my history of the company.”
Schultz: Gloria Jean's Once Had More Stores Than Starbucks via Franchising
“That was Gloria Jeans out of Chicago. And at one point, I think they had more stores than we did because of the franchising opportunity.”
Schultz: Starbucks uses lowercase employee job titles out of respect
“No, everyone was lowercase from the beginning. Out of respect. Everyone's lowercase.”