. . begin it. Boldness has genius, power and magic in it.—GOETHE For five years, from 1987 to 1992, Starbucks remained a privately held company. I was able to learn my job and grow into it outside the glaring spotlight that is cast on publicly traded companies. With the support and approval of my investors, and ultimately the confidence of employees, we pushed ahead on many fronts at once: national expansion, employee benefits, investing in the future, and management development.The following chapters describe what we accomplished on each of these fronts and recount the important lessons we learned during Starbucks’ formative years, when our culture was being shaped. It was a time of many debates, of honing our core values, of standing firm on some issues and learning to compromise on others. SPECIALTY COFFEE IN AMEAT-AND-POTATOES TOWNPerhaps the gutsiest, and possibly the riskiest, move we made during this period was our entry into the Chicago market. In hindsight, it’s hard to believe we took on such a challenge so early in the development of Starbucks.The idea had actually originated at Il Giornale, even before the marriage to Starbucks.
