Listening

At the annual shareholder’s meeting last week we announced an initiative to listen to you better by creating our first online community, MyStarbucksIdea.com. It takes the Starbucks Experience outside the store and enables customers to play a role in shaping the company’s future. The reactions have been mixed, from supportive to defensive and all the spectrum in between. To be clear, this isn’t the only initiative bent on listening and broadening the debate from esoteric sites to a larger community of Starbucks stakeholders.

For SocialNet Communities, check out some of the ones created by and for the community:

• Addicted to Starbucks (70,000+ groupies as of this post)
• I Heart Starbucks (14,000 strong)
• Starbucks Partners (5,000+, 170,000 to go)
• And more

Thank you for keeping the conversation and connections going, which is ultimately more of the Starbucks Experience in The Fourth Place.

Onward, Howard

What I Know to Be True

As I sit down to write this note (6:30 a.m. Sunday morning) I am enjoying a spectacular cup of Sumatra, brewed my favorite way – in a French press.

It has been three weeks since I returned to my role as ceo of the company I love. We have made much progress as we begin to transform and innovate and there is much more to come. But this is not a sprint – it is a marathon – it always has been. I assure you that when all is said and done, we will, as we always have, succeed at our highest potential. We will not be deterred from our course – we are and will be a great, enduring company, known for inspiring and nurturing the human spirit.

During this time, I have heard from so many of you; in fact, I have received more than 2,000 emails. I can feel your passion and commitment to the company, to our customers and to one another. I also thank you for all your ideas and suggestions … keep them coming. No one knows our business and our customers better than you. I have visited with you in many of your stores, as well as stopping by to see what our competitors are doing as well.

It’s been just a few days since my last communications to you, but I wanted to share with you

what I know to be true:

• Since 1971, we have been ethically sourcing and roasting the highest quality Arabica coffee in the world, and today there is not a coffee company on earth providing higher quality coffee to their customers than we are. Period!

• We are in the people business and always have been. What does that mean? It means you make the difference. You are the Starbucks brand. We succeed in the marketplace and distinguish ourselves by each and every partner embracing the values, guiding principles and culture of our company and bringing it to life one customer at a time.
  

• Our stores have become the Third Place in our communities – a destination where human connections happen tens of thousands of times a day. We are not in the coffee business serving people. We are in the people business serving coffee. You are the best people serving the best coffee and I am proud to be your partner. There is no other place I would rather be than with you right here, right now!

• We have a renewed clarity of purpose and we are laser-focused on the customer experience. We have returned to our core to reaffirm our coffee authority and we will have some fun doing it. We are not going to embrace the status quo. Instead, we will be curious, bold and innovative in our actions and, in doing so, we will exceed the expectation of our customers.

• There will be cynics and critics along the way, all of whom will have an opinion and a point of view. This is not about them or our competitors, although we must humbly respect the changing landscape and the many choices facing every consumer. We will be steadfast in our approach and in our commitment to the Starbucks Experience – what we know to be true. However, this is about us and our customers. We are in control of our destiny. Trust the coffee and trust one another.

• I will lead us back to the place where we belong, but I need your help and support every step of the way. My expectations of you are high, but higher of myself.

• I want to hear from you. I want to hear about your ideas, your wins, your concerns, and how we can collectively continue to improve. Please feel free to reach out to me. I have been flooded with emails, but believe me, I am reading and responding to all of them.

As I said, I am proud to be your partner. I know this to be true.

Onward …

Howard

P.S. Everything that we do, from this point on (from the most simple and basic), matters.

Master the fundamentals. Experience Starbucks

P.S.S. Continue the conversation in public by posting your thoughts and comments below.

Voicemail to Partners

Here’s the voicemail to all Partners announcing my transformational agenda and return as CEO:

Hello partners, this is Howard Schultz. Today, Starbucks is announcing a series of strategic initiatives to increase shareholder value and capitalize on our significant U.S. and international opportunities.

Going forward, we will be refocusing our entire organization on the Starbucks Experience, by going back to our heritage and what made us so successful in the first place; putting the customer back at the center of everything we do.

The execute this transformation, the Starbucks Board of Directors has asked me to return as your chief executive officer, in addition to serving as chairman, effective today. This is not an interim role for me. I’m in it for the long-term and I promise to be decisive and do all I can to lead Starbucks to new heights.

Jim Donald will be leaving the Company and let me just pay special tribute to Jim who has been a passionate and tireless advocate of the company. I’m grateful and I thank him for his significant contributions and I wish him nothing but the best in the future. He’s been a business partner and a dear friend and I’m sorry to see him leave and I think it’s clear to say that his contribution to our Company cannot be overstated.

The success of Starbucks rests on the emotional connection we have with each other and with our customers. It also rests on how we implement our strategy and innovate to stay ahead in a competitive marketplace and tough economic environment.

I think recently we have become victims of our own tremendous success. We are emerging from a period in which we have invested heavily in infrastructure ahead of the growth of the company and, although necessary, it has lead to bureaucracy that has both slowed us down and cost us money. We now shift our emphasis back to consumer facing initiatives, betting aligning our back end costs with our business model.

In refocusing our Company, we are going to play to our strengths – to what has made Starbucks and the Starbucks experience so unique; ethically sourcing and roasting the highest quality coffee in the world, the relentless focus on our customers, the trust we have built with our people, and the smart, entrepreneurial risk-taking, innovation and creativity that are the hallmarks of our company.

To this end, in the coming months you will be seeing internal changes and exciting new developments at Starbucks.

We’ll share the specifics as soon as we can. But in general, I can tell you that our transformational agenda will have three objectives:

- To improve the current state of the U.S. business

- To re-ignite the Starbucks experience through driving improvement and change in all areas that “touch the customer”; and

- To build for the long term; this has two distinct pieces;

- Realign our organization and streamline the management of the organization to support customer focused intitiaves and

- Accelerate our International success story and growth even further

In closing, let me say that we are truly in this together. Every partner plays a critical role. I am asking that each of us focus on carrying out our responsibilities in the best way possible, and help to create welcoming and distinctive places that are truly a “third place” for customers and the communities that we serve.

Let me just say to everyone who is listening, I am sincerely excited and energized by the challenges and the opportunities we have. I am here for the long term. I’m here to help every one of you succeed and to restore the company to the greatness it has been.

But our success is up to you, not only me, but all of you and all of us. We know what we need to do to win and we will do so.

Thanks for all you do and all you have done and for contributing so much to Starbucks and to all those people who work so hard and tirelessly behind the scenes who contribute to so much.

Thank you very much. All the best.

Howard