The book I read to research this post was Pour Your Heart Into It by Charles Schultz which is an excellent book which I bought from kindle. A while back I reviewed Onward also by Charles Schultz about how he came back into the CEO job at Starbucks and helped make the company much more successful. This book is the prequel to that book and is about how he started the company and follows his first stint as CEO. Charles had a holiday in Italy and came up with the idea of trying out having restaurants that specialized in gourmet coffee. In Italy they had these places where they had newspapers for you to read and had gourmet coffees like espresso which served a discerning clientele. He thought the same could be done in Seattle, Washington. Seattle was facing a bad recession with one of there major employers slimming down its workforce from over 100,000 to just 38,000. Initially when he was working in a restaurant he talked the boss into turning part of it into a gourmet coffee section but had only been given a small area which was so tiny customers had to stand and there was no tables. They did however get some coffee machines. He left this company and started his own gourmet coffee restaurant. He had difficulty getting financing. They ran at a loss for the 1st 3 years due to the amount of financing needed. After that they made a profit and later he was able to buy the company he used to work for and he took their name Starbucks as the name of his company mainly because it was better known but also because he liked the name. Later on they started a mail order business for discerning coffee drinkers. Eventually they even invested in their own research and development centre where scientists would try and develop new products centred around coffee. I really enjoyed this book and it's a reasonable length at around 340 pages but is also a wealth of information. I think this book is even better than Onward.

The book I read to research this post was Onward by Charles Schultz which is an excellent business autobiography which I bought from kindle. Charles is the ceo of Starbuck's, they always express job titles in lower case letters at that company and later on he was brought back into that role to turn the company around. Charles went on holiday to Italy in the early 70's and was impressed by the specialist coffee shops in Milan & Verona. He then started learning all he could about specialist coffee and how it should be prepared. He worked in a cafe that served instant coffee so he left his job and started his own coffee shop. 10 months later he earned enough to buy out his former employer and their name which was Starbuck's became the name of his company. This book is a kind of a sequel and is primarily about when he was brought back as ceo. One thing he discovered was that the employees didn't make the coffee properly. When they made cappucchino they often put the milk in the milk frother more than once which broke down the sweetness of the milk. When they made espresso they either poured it to quickly or too slowly which spoilt the consistency which should be similiar to that of honey. He closed down all his shops in America and retaught his workers their job which many thought was corporate suicide and cost the company millions but paid off in the long run. They also reintroduced sandwiches at breakfast which they had previously only been doing on request which resulted in a cut in their revenue. This many people requested be reintroduced. Starbuck's is one of the best employers anywhere and even gives shares to it's part time employees. Employees are called partners. It has a very strict but fair policy on the products it buys where it pays more than the market price but the highest standards are expected. Workers don't wear after shave or perfume in case it taints the coffee. Starbuck's has also become a cyber-cafe and was among the first to see the benefits of social networking. Believe me this is a heck of a good read and I think any business person will love this book.