Ben Gilbert: prediction

Transcript context

…I was out of my mind. David, Howard sent me a 1988—I can’t believe this was filmed—shareholder and employee meeting, where it’s great. The whole thing’s like an hour-and-a-half. It’s all there. You are using all the same language that you use today back in 1988. We focus on our people. Those people delight the customer. The customer delights or satisfies the shareholder. The conviction that you have is like watching a preacher. You’re up there, you’ve got I think 11 stores or something, and you’re like, you have no idea what we have here. We are on top of something that is going to change—you don’t say the world—America, and this thing can become America’s coffee house. It was interesting because I think the whole room was already scared of your ambition of going nationwide with this thing that there did not exist another example of a national coffee house chain. Everything was just these little cities, these small markets. There’s this great quote that you have at the end of the meeting that says, “The company since 1971, has been growing at a very, very slow pace. As a result of that, you combine Il Giornale and Starbucks together. We’re going to take your 6 stores that you’ve built in 17 years and we’re going to go to 26 in one year, and we’re going to go to over 100 in 5 years.” That must have just sounded bonkers, but that is literally what happened. That’s what happened.…

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