Naming Starbucks | Jerry Baldwin

And then now that you have that money and you're scouting locations for that first store, are you guys hitting the streets and looking for places or?

Well, Seattle wasn't a big town. I mean, it's a lot larger now. But we had, you know, we knew the town, knew the neighborhoods, and that was long discussion about where's the right place. Again, Gordon Was certainly an advocate for the market. There's another place under discussion. Being in the Pike Place Market was without a doubt one of the smart— that was one of the 4 smart things we did.

One of the 4? Right.

That's the 3rd.

What are the other ones? It was finding each other?

Complementary skills. Alfred Peet, the mentor.

Mentor. Great location. And we'll get to 4 hopefully in a minute. Oh, and then the name. So how did the name come about?

Well, that was— we had a bunch of names. Oh, here's another lesson. We— I think this was at Zev's suggestion. We did a ranking. So everyone put his first, second, and third choices down. And I guess— I can't remember— 5 points for first and 4 for second and 3 for third or something like that. And so what we ended up with was everybody's second choice. Or, you know, it's like this ranked voting, which doesn't necessarily get you the candidate you want.

Do you remember some of the other options?

Oh gee, there were all sorts of names on there. But over the Christmas holiday season of 1970, we all came down to Berkeley one by one to work in Pete's store in Berkeley. When we got back in Seattle, we sort of looked at each other and said, this name sucks.

Pete's?

No, no, no, no. Not Pete's. No. No. Well, never mind that. We felt that we needed a name The name that we had was so awful, I can almost not say it. Well, I'll just allude to it. It was about trading, cargo, customs, clipper ships. You know, that was the idea.

Hmm.

So, but we recognized that it wasn't a good name, that we wanted a family name, as if it belonged to a person, you know, which would be typical in Europe. And, you know, any of our names or any combination of them was unevocative. So we went to work on a surname. And actually, Starbuck was not on our list, but Starbo was. Both of them happened to be mining towns in eastern Washington. Starbuck is also a town in Minnesota. But as we Went along discussing this back and forth. The only thing we could actually agree on was that we needed a new name. And Gordon, again, came through and said— we were looking at Starbo— he said, Starbucks. And we said, that is it. You can't misspell it. You can't mispronounce it. All of the letters are above the line graphically.

Mm-hmm.

There's a tall one toward the end, so you get a nice— the way Starbucks has done it is all caps. So it reads well graphically. It's hard to come up with that good a name.

Yeah, it is. Naming is very tough.

So we didn't know how good it was when we did it, but we're glad we did it.

And now that you've got the name, the store location picked out, and you guys are finally getting that store together and it opens, what are the feelings like when you finally open that first location?

Oh, relief, probably. Well, there's the original logo. Yeah, that's the logo in negative.

This is the original store, I think. Yeah. Good research.

That's it, all right. Yeah, cash register, believe it or not, it was mechanical. Actually, that's pretty interesting because in the foreground there, there are thermal servers, and those are Hammerplast. Which is where Howard— that's how Howard Schultz got to Starbucks, was from Hammerblast. So tea in the background there, and these coffee bins, you know, patterned on Pete's store, which he let us do.

And opening that first store, what sort of challenges did you guys have to overcome to even get it up?

Well, we built it ourselves.

You guys were in there hammering away and—

I was the electrician. Gordon did the woodworking. We built those bins in his parents' basement. We finished them ourselves. They were lined with epoxy instead of laminate. That was done outside. We had a friend who was an architect who designed the shelving system, and we built it.

So you guys must have been real proud when it opened. I mean, you put in hard work.

Well, that brick wall behind was covered with plaster. We ground all the plaster off ourselves.

Wow.

Yeah, well, it's, you know, the thing about that, it's kind of a relief. You know, the first thing that you run into is, oh, I got a good idea. Okay. You know, and you go through the idea development, and you finally get some money, and you say, phew. You know, and then the work starts. You think that was hard.

Right.

Wait till you actually get going. I think of it as kind of like the Big Bang in the creation of the universe, is that, you know, there's one set of laws of physics that apply before the Big Bang, And another set that we're continuing to use after. And that's what it's like. Whew, now it's open. Now, now what do we do?

So now that it is open, what are the roles that you 3 are taking? Since there are 3 of you and you're complementary, what is each man doing?

Well, Zev was the only one with a salary and he managed the store. I, I had a semester of accounting, so I was the de facto CFO.

One semester of accounting will get you the CFO role.

Well, I don't even think that term was extant then. But anyway, so, you know, I would come in and, you know, take care of that stuff. Gordon would relieve Zev at lunch. We all worked Saturdays and we just, you know, kind of kept going.

And do you remember the first customer who came through the doors at all?

Well, it was a friend with his daughter on his back. He bought a pound of coffee or maybe perhaps 2 and some Filter papers, $5.37, and wrote us a check. You didn't turn that up?

No, I didn't find his check, sadly. It was not in the online resources. I should have went to the library. That's where I messed up. And that first year of selling coffee at Starbucks, you are selling whole beans, not—

Well, we were selling whole beans, and we'll ground it. We'll grind it. There are those yellow things down on the left are Or grinders. And we're brewing coffee as well, perpendicular to that counter is another coffee where we're brewing and giving it away, serving it in ceramic cups.

Just giving it away, like letting people try it out?

Right. Yeah, the idea was, well, coffee was really expensive then. I mean, our entry-level coffee was $1.25 a pound.

I don't know what that is in today's standards.

I mean, now it's about, I don't know, $15 or something. But that was double what you'd pay for a pound of whatever in the supermarket. So we felt that it was important that they taste it. And it was quite strong tasting to someone who's just drinking average American stuff.

And you're getting your supply at the time from Pete, correct?

Yes.

Is it straight-up Pete's coffee, or did he make a distinct flavor for you guys? In particular?

No, we were just— the same thing that was being sold in his store, but we couldn't use his blend names, so we had to rename his blends.

Are those blend names still being used today?

At Starbucks?

Yeah.

Gee, good question. I don't know. Pete's Blend is not.

Yeah.

There was Yukon Blend. I think they brought it back. I'm actually not sure. I'm not following that.