Howard Schultz: belief

Transcript context

…It became a trope for decades now that it’s, oh, it’s a $6 latte or an $8 latte. Where does that come from? In your mind, is Starbucks premium priced? Is there actually a Starbucks gets to charge a little bit more because the brand has more cache? Or is that just completely a farce or myth? I think the pricing of Starbucks was directly linked to the economic model that I alluded to earlier, and the rising costs of labor, rent, and the fiduciary responsibility that we all felt to achieving the promise we had to our shareholders. Now we’re talking about as a public company. There certainly was a fair amount of discussion all the time about the sensitivity of the price points. In later years, maybe in the last couple of years, given the consumer inflationary time, I think it’s become a bit of a problem. Certainly, I’ve always said as Starbucks was growing, that the ubiquity of Starbucks was an enemy to the company. The challenge was we have to figure out a way to ensure the fact that we are getting smaller as we’re getting bigger, specifically how do we maintain intimacy and the currency of trust with our customers and our people. That unto itself is the capsule of making sure that the growth doesn’t become so intoxicating and so seductive that we lose sight of the really secret of the company, which was the internal culture and values, which built the brand and built a relationship with the customer. Can you tell us about the people? This is such a huge pillar to our minds of building Starbucks.…

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