Know more about Starbucks Coffee Company's first store, logo history and more.Home > Coffee-Brands > Starbucks-Coffee The Starbucks Company started in 1971 by Zev Siegl, Jerry Baldwin and Gordon Bowker. Its first store was in Seattle's Pike Place Market and was originally known as Starbucks Coffee, Tea and Spices. It was the beginning of what we now know as the biggest coffee house company in the world. The Starbucks locations have expanded globally and now has more than 16, 785 stores worldwide in 49 international markets, and employs 160,000 partners (employees) worldwide. Who is Howard Schultz? Howard Schultz is the present Chairman, President and CEO of Starbucks Coffee Company. He joined the company in 1982 as a director of retail operations and marketing. In 1983, Schultz travels to Italy, where he's impressed with the popularity of espresso bars in Milan. As a visionary, he sees that there is potential in Seattle to develop a similar concept - coffee bar culture. After months of convincing the previous owners of offering coffee and espresso drinks as well as beans, the owners finally gave in and in 1984 they tested the bar concept in a new location in downtown Seattle. Because this experiment was a success, Schultz started Il Giornale, offering brewed coffee and espresso beverages in 1985. In 1987, backed up by local investors Il Giornale acquires Starbucks assets and changes its name to Starbucks Corporation. This was just the beginning of Schultz's vision of inspiring and nurturing the human spirit - One person, one cup and one neighborhood at a time. How did Starbucks come up with its name? The company's name came from Starbuck, Captain Ahab's first mate on the ship in Herman Melville's 1851 classic novel Moby Dick, who was known as an avid coffee drinker. One of the company's founder, Gordon Bowker, suggested the name "Pequod" (the ship in the novel), but their creative partner at that time responded with "No one's going to drink a cup of Pee-quod!"
In 2006, in a statement by Valerie O'Neil, a spokeswoman for the coffee company, she said that the logo is an image of a "twin-tailed siren." In its original version, the Starbucks logo was based on a 16th century Norse woodcut; a two-tailed mermaid encircled by the store's original name. The siren or mermaid had a fully visible double fish tail and was topless. This reflects the seafaring origins of the early coffee traders. From 1987-1992, the company changed its logo so as not to show the breasts of the siren/mermaid by covering them with her flowing hair. Her navel was still visible but her fish tail was cropped. Since 1992, the coffee company has been using the logo we see now in most stores around the world. The navel and the breasts of the siren is not visible anymore and only vestiges remain of the fish tails.
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