SimplyAbuDhabi XXXVII

094 | SIMPLY INFLUENTIAL I went past one coffee bar after another and was captivated.” “ Schultzwas just 30 when inspiration hit him at Caffe Camparino. He had recently started work as head of marketing at Starbucks and was attending a coffee trade show in Milan to scope out the latest coffee makers for the company’s founder, Jerry Baldwin. Back then, Starbucks sold only coffee beans and coffee-making kit – pots and cafetières – in five stores in and around Seattle. The weather was lovely and warm on that day, soSchultz decided to walk to the convention. It was the best decision of his life. “I went past one coffee bar after another and was captivated. I went in. I ordered my coffee. I left, walked another hundred yards or so and went into another one and eventually wound up here. I must have hit 20,” he recalls. “The symphony of flavour, the romance and showmanship that coffee could create – I was in heaven.” He forgot about the convention and sat down to write a business plan for a chain of coffee bars that would introduce his version of Italian coffee culture to America. He rushed back to present it to Baldwin, but his plans were rejected because they would push up labour costs. Undaunted, Schultz resigned in 1985 and opened his first Italian coffee bar, named Il Giornale – “the newspaper”. When Baldwin decided to move to California to run another company, he offered to sell Starbucks toSchultz so he could finally enact his business plan. The catch? He had to raise $3.8m in 60 days. Luckily, Bill Gates Sr, the father of the Microsoft co-founder, came to his rescue. What followed has changed the world. Well, most of it. Although Italy was the inspiration for his empire, Schultz never attempted to conquer the spiritual home of coffee. He didn’t have the nerve. His fears were – and still may be – justified, if the views of the more sceptical Milanese are anything to go by. Despite its global success, Starbucks is perceived by some purists as just another big American chain. How, they may ask, didSchultz get so big for his beans that he thinks he can turn up and tell the Italians how to enjoy coffee? Schultz, for his part, says he approached the idea with complete humility and respect. “We’re have to do something that hasn’t been done before. Just open a coffee store here? No. We had to do something extraordinary”. Indeed, the Piazza Cordusio cafe, just around the corner from the Duomo, is no ordinary Starbucks. It is a high-end Reserve Roastery, resembling a Willy Wonka coffee factory – the company’s third, following launches in Seattle and Shanghai. Inside the 25,000 sq ft space, which cost tens of millions of dollars to create, customers go on “a magical carpet ride and see a show”, Schultz says. “We’re roasting coffee and, after it’s roasted, it goes up into these vacuum chutes and all around like a spider web – it’s all over the building, and it ends up in your cup.” There’s whizzy tech, too. “You can walk in with your phone, hold it up in front of a part of the store and information will pop up about the roasting process going on in front of you,” Schultz says. “Milanese won’t have seen anything like it.” Or, he claims, tasted anything like it. In a further effort to win over the locals, Schultz created an exclusive house blend using rare, high-quality beans from small-batch producers to create a sweeter, robust, rich flavour. Customers won’t be served the soggy wraps you get in Britain or doughy scones bigger than your head you find in the US. Instead, Rocco Princi, Milan’s most feted baker, was brought in to bake bread, cornetti, brioche and pizza on site. Schultz had to fly Princi and his family to see the Roastery in Seattle to convince him to work with Starbucks after a lifetime of turning down partners big and small. SIMPLY INFLUENTIAL | 095 Back to the beginnings