Starbucks’ Strategy and Internal Initiatives to Return to Profitable Growth
Arthur A. Thompson
The University of Alabama ince its founding in 1987 as a modest nine-store operation in Seattle, Washington, Starbucks had become the world’s premier roaster and retailer of specialty coffees, with 8,812 company-owned stores and 7,852 licensed stores in more than 50 countries as of April 2010 and annual sales of about $10 billion. But the company’s 2008–2009 fiscal years were challenging. Sales at company-owned Starbucks stores open 13 months or longer declined an average of 3 percent in 2008 and another 5 percent in 2009. Company-wide revenues declined from $10.4 billion in fiscal year 2008 to $9.8 billion in fiscal year 2009. During fiscal 2009, Starbucks closed 800 underperforming company-operated stores in the United States and an additional 100 stores in other countries, restructured its entire operations in Australia (including the closure of 61 stores), and reduced the number of planned new store openings by more than 200. Starbucks’ global workforce was trimmed by about 6,700 employees. The company’s cost-reduction and laborefficiency initiatives resulted in savings of about $580 million. Exhibit 1 shows the performance of Starbucks’ company-operated retail stores for the most recent five fiscal years. In his November 2009 letter to company shareholders, Howard Schultz, Starbucks’ founder, chairman of the board, and chief executive officer, said:
Two years ago, I expressed concern over challenges confronting our business of a breadth and magnitude unlike anything I had ever seen before. For the first time, we were beginning to see traffic in our U.S. stores slow. Strong competitors were entering our business. And perhaps most troublesome, where in the past Starbucks had always

CASE 23

Amit J. Shah
Frostburg State University been forward-thinking and