Sexy Friday – 20260828

TGIF! JV football is back for Week 0! Although there are way too many games to call it that anymore. Also, the last preseason games. The football season is almost upon us!

Word Count Filler Time

Let’s talk about the craven shit heel named Howard Shultz. I will not be discussing the deceased SuperSonics at his greedy hands, but how he founded Starbucks.

This all starts in Sweden. Back in the 80’s there was a Swedish company called Hammperplast that sold plastic coffee filters that fit over thermometers. Howard was a salesman for that company. What surprised him was one customer, a roasting company called Starbucks Coffee, Tea, and Spice bought more filters from him than the Macys entire store chain. So Howard made a personal visit to Seattle to investigate this company further. He found a company that roasted coffee beans and sold coffee making supplies, but didn’t sell actual coffee beverages.

He toured the roasting plant and met the owners, then decided he wanted to be a part of the company. A year later when Starbucks planned to open its sixth location, out of Seattle, they finally hired Howard as Director of Retail Operations. In that role, a few years later, he attended a convention in Italy. There he discovered coffee bars and had his first espresso and latte. A light bulb went off in his head as he now had a business model to expand Starbucks. The owners pushed back because they didn’t want to run a restaurant, but after a year they finally relented and placed an espresso machine in that sixth Starbucks location. Within months that location was seeing more than 3 times as many customers as any other locations. Did this convince the owners to change their stance? Absolutely not.

So, Howard took his ball and went home. This was in the form of quitting and opening his own coffee shop in Columbia Tower and gave it the pretentious name of Il Giornales. (Tallest skyscraper in Seattle btw) He eventually expanded to three stores before hearing that the Starbucks owners were selling. Howard got a loan for the $3.8MM price and bought it, then abandoned the Il Giornales name because cmon on and converted everything to Starbucks and made them all an actual coffee shop.

Three years later, Howard had expanded Starbucks to 55 locations. Two years later, Starbucks went public and expanded to 165 locations that year. By 2004 Starbucks had 7,569 locations. To say he was successful is a vast understatement. He also convinced folks that what used to be a cheap drink is no longer cheap at all. And also fooled folks into thinking burnt beans make good coffee.

All that good fortune allowed him the wherewithal to buy the SuperSonics and then oversee their death. Christ, what an asshole.

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Sexy Time

Enjoy the weekend, folks! Alright, now let’s get to the comments!