Howard Schultz: commitment

Transcript context

…The program was called Beans Stock, listeners that Howard was alluding to. Amazing name. In 1988, the health benefits roll out even to part-time employees, including gay couples in domestic partnerships, I believe the first of its kind, that was a 33-store company at that point. A few years later you had grown to 55 stores, you did the LA expansion. Then in 1991, which is the year before the IPO, Beans Stock happens, equity in the form of stock options goes out to everyone working 20 plus hours a week. There were 1300 employees at the time. I believe is the first time in history that part-time employees were offered a program like this. Those initial grants, the strike price was $6 per share. Today as we speak, the share price is $77, but there have been six splits since then, which comes out to a 64X. That initial grant has 800X’d since even the part-time employees and baristas were offered the opportunity to buy Starbucks stock. A lawyer, I think Scott Greenberg at the time came to me and said, we can’t do this unless we get approval from the SEC because we were over 500 shareholders. We’ve studied lots of amazing companies on this show who have lots and lots of different business models. But one thing that just kept striking us as we were preparing for Starbucks are the similarities to your neighbor here in the Northwest and Costco.…

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