Serving people first: Starbucks

According to two authors Marc Benioff and Carlye Adler in their book “ The Business of Changing the World “ published in 2007, chapter 11, page 163-180, “One impressive fact is that Starbucks is also committed to communities where it doesn’t have a presence” (Benioff and Adler, 2007, page 163).
The writers stated Starbucks was founded by 3 friends who are: a writer , an English teacher and a history teacher, they were “three coffee aficionados” (Benioff and Adler, 2007, page 163) with $ 1,350 in the investment to have the first store in Seattle in 1971. By 1980, Starbucks had 6 retail stores as well as was the largest store selling coffee machines in Washington state reported by the authors. Benioff and Adler noted that the development of Starbucks caught the eyes of Howard Schults who was a “New York-based housewares salesman” (Benioff and Adler, 2007, page 163), at first, he became an employee of Starbucks until he came back from Milan where he had his idea of marking the turning-point in Starbucks “Starbucks could be a great experience, not just a great retail store” (Benioff and Adler, 2007, page 163) and he bought Starbucks with $ 3.8 million to became the owner since then. According to the meeting between the writers and Jim Donald , President and CEO of Starbucks since 2005 , Donald said the success of Starbucks based on “Guiding Principles” (Benioff and Adler, 2007, page 173) including: the partnering treatment , stock options and tuition repayment. Moreover , Donald stated Starbucks has been working with CARE International since 1992 to help people who were homeless , had health problems, were lack of education. Especially , according to the writers , Starbucks had a programme called C.A.F.E. Practice was the abbreviation of “Coffee And Farmer Equity” (Benioff and Adler, 2007, page 176) to help farmers who are selling coffee and beans to Starbucks by paying premium for them. In addition, Donald showed that there were another programme called “Make Your Mark” (Benioff and Adler, 2007, page 177) held to have their employees volunteered to non-profit organizations, assumed by two writers . Eventually, Benioff and Adler reported that Donald revealed his feeling since he worked for Starbucks, Starbucks changed his life by the concepts of business which he never realized when he ran a supermarket business in the past.
The two writers ended this chapter by giving more details about something called “The Starbucks six guiding principles” which is still considered as the basis concept made Starbucks well-known and special.