A founder explains why his company rejected franchising to stay true to its culture. The core idea: they weren't in the coffee business serving people, but in the people business serving coffee. He built company-owned stores instead to protect what mattered.
But there was another dream I had, and that was to build a different type of company. A company that potentially could achieve the delicate balance between profitability and the fiscal responsibility of building shareholder value, but the balance of also having a heart benevolence and integrating a social conscience in everything the company would do. Fast forward from 87 to 89 and 1990. The company was beginning to get some traction. We all realized at the time that we were not in the coffee business serving people, but we were in the people business serving coffee. That if we wanted to exceed the expectations of the customer, we had to first exceed the expectations of our people. We made a very important strategic decision early on that franchising could not maintain the culture and values of the company, that all it would be an access to cheap capital. And so we continued on track of opening and building a company owned system.
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