Real Story真故事22-咖啡店的故事

Life is full of surprises, passion, beliefs and all the down time we experience. It seems we’re tested by the society all the time. It’s becoming more important to find a moment for ourselves. This is Real Story, we’re on!

咖啡店里故事多，开咖啡店并不简单。今天的故事主要讲述励志人物星巴克的CEO和合伙人Howard Schultz。Howard 的主要业绩就是把这家美国咖啡厅开遍了全球。然而Howard 的经历从不缺乏励志-从小家境贫寒，为了获得大学的奖学金，从高中开始就刻苦打橄榄球，因为他知道知识改变命运的第一步。大学毕业后并不顺利，然而他愈挫愈勇，终于在咖啡店的管理上取得很大的成就。

今日词汇：

rags-to-riches从贫到富

instant coffee 速溶咖啡

bartender  酒吧招待

self-esteem 自尊

swiftly  迅速地

ski lodge 滑雪场

Hey I’m Frank X for Real Story. I want to talk about coffee shop stories and the man who made coffee business super successful. It’s interesting to see that there are more Chinese in the south who like drinking coffee than people in the north. I was born and grew up in the north. I found people over here don’t visit the coffee shops for coffee, of course there are not so many coffee shops either. People take coffee shops as places where they can relax and talk, kill some time. So it doesn’t really matter if the coffee is delicious. Like it or not, coffee shop still has its market and there are many stories that happen in the coffee shops in the world. And some stories are made into movies, like this one called “The coffee shop”(movie)

  Howard Schultz was born on July 19, 1953 in Brooklyn, New York. He became retail and marketing director in 1982. He bought Starbucks in 1987 and also became the CEO of the chain in the later years. His experience is a rags-to-riches story. A rags-to-riches story means the story about a person who becomes very rich from being poor. Before he bought Starbucks, coffee was not so good to enjoy. It was instant coffee everywhere and it took 1 minute to make a cup of it. He wanted to change that. Over the years, he made Starbucks world famous and there are his coffee shops all over the world. But to be this successful wasn’t as easy as it sounds. 

His childhood was a miserable one because of his poor family background. When he was 7 years old, his father was a truck driver delivering baby products. Unfortunately, his father broke his ankle while working and he got no medical care covered, and his company didn’t pay him any money for his accident. Suddenly Howard’s family lost their only income. Little Howard struggled to go to high school. Because he played football well, he earned a scholarship to Northern Michigan University. By the time Schultz started college, he decided he wasn't going to play football after all. To pay for his school cost, he took out student loans and took up different part-time jobs, including working as a bartender and even occasionally selling his blood.

After graduation in 1975, Schultz spent a few years doing jobs here and there, nothing seemed so easy for him but he slowly worked his way to becoming a vice president and general manager, leading a team of salespeople out of the US office in New York. One day he saw Starbucks. The coffee shop had a few stores in Seattle and caught his attention. Interested, Schultz traveled to Seattle to meet the company's then owners, Gerald Baldwin and Gordon Bowker. He was struck by the partners' passion and their courage in selling a product that would attract only to a small number of coffee lovers.

A year later, the 29-year-old Howard finally persuaded Baldwin to hire him as the director of retail operations and marketing. At the time, Starbucks only had three stores, but they were selling pounds of coffee for home use, Schultz said. Then Howard Schultz got into the coffee business with one goal in mind: to get the personal relationship between people and their coffee better. Here’s his speech after he was successful(Howard’s speech)

Schultz's career — and Starbucks' fate — changed forever when the company sent him to an international housewares show in Milan. While walking around the city, he saw several coffee bars where owners knew their customers by name and served them different coffee drinks. Schultz then suddenly understood the personal relationship that people could have to coffee. In 1985, Schultz left Starbucks after his ideas to have an Italian-like experience for coffee-lovers were rejected by the founders. He soon started his own coffee company. America swiftly took a liking to Starbucks. In 1992, the company went public on the NASDAQ; its 165 stores pulled in $93 million in revenue that year. The world eventually caught on, and by 2000 Starbucks had grown into a global operation of more than 3,500 stores and $2.2 billion in annual revenue.

Throughout his career at Starbucks, Schultz has always called his employees "partners." Largely because of his father's experience when he was injured, Schultz offers all his employees, including part-time workers complete health-care coverage as well as stock options.In the last 28 years, Schultz has grown the coffeemaker to include more than 21,000 stores in 65 countries (ironically, there are none in Italy). "I've always been driven and hungry," Schultz said. "Long after others have stopped to rest and recover, I'm still running, chasing after something nobody else could ever see."

In Schultz's book he wrote:

Every experience prepares you for the next one. You just don't ever know what the next one is going to be.

After graduating from college in 1975, like a lot of kids, I didn't know what to do next. I wasn't ready to go back to New York, so I stayed in Michigan, working at a nearby ski lodge. I had no mentor, no role model, no special teacher to help me sort out my options. So I took some time to think, but still no inspiration came.

After a year, I went back to New York and got a job with Xerox, in the sales training program. It was a lucky break, since I was able to attend the best sales school in the country, I learned more there than in college about the worlds of work and business. They trained me in sales, marketing, and presentation skills, and I walked out with a healthy sense of self-esteem. I got a lot of respect when I told others who my employer was.

After completing the course, I spent six months making fifty cold calls a day. I knocked on doors of offices in midtown Manhattan, in a territory that ran from 42nd Street to 48th Street, from the East River to Fifth Avenue.Cold-calling was great training for business. It taught me to think on my feet. So many doors slammed on me that I had to develop a thick skin, but the work amazed me, and I kept my sense of humor and adventure. I won on the competition, trying to be the best, to be noticed, to provide the most leads to my salesmen. I wanted to win. Finally, I succeeded: I became a full salesman in the same territory. I got to be pretty good at it, wearing a suit, closing sales, and earning good commissions for three years. I sold a lot of machines and outperformed many of my peers. That’s Howard Schultz's story. The information I want to tell everyone is, to be successful isn’t easy, and it takes more than just money.

   There are still many people in the world who have a dream to open a coffee shop. Michelle also had this dream, because she loves coffee. See how she got everything started(coffee shop story1)

Michelle said a coffee shop is the extension of family and community. It’s many people’s family tradition to solve many problems over a cup of coffee. It shouldn’t be a third place for people after a whole day’s work, instead, it’s part of their life. So making a coffee shop different is important to be successful. A coffee shop in Colorado Springs is showing it doesn't require much space to make an impact story. A coffee company is making use of the tiny house movement. Don’s coffee shop is tiny, but has no problems with customers.(tiny coffee shop story)

It doesn’t matter if the size of your shop is large since many large sized coffee shops also got closed down. As Howard said about coffee shops: there should be a good relationship between the employees and coffee. If you have a passion for serving delicious coffee and if you enjoy socializing then you will most likely do very well. You have to really enjoy the job and the life. When a customer walks in to your coffee shop and feels that you and your staff are happy and that you guys are enjoying your work then that has a massive impact. It creates a great atmosphere and your coffee shop will be a wonderful relaxing place to visit. You are listening to Real Story, I’m Frank, a professional English teacher. Let me hear your voice, you can leave your comments and questions here if you like my show, and you can subscribe for more updates, my class information and answers to your questions. That’s for today’s show, see you soon.

#Written and edited文字作者：Frank X老师，转载请注明出处;

#voice and tech-work:语音录制：Frank X;

 #Background music背景音乐: James Arthur-Say you won't let go;  

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