Everyone Must Have A Shot At The

Early On I Realized That I Had To Hire People Smarter And More Qualified Than I Was In A Number Of Different Fields, And I Had To Let Go Of A Lot Of Decision-making. I Can't Tell You How Hard That Is. But If You've Imprinted Your Values On The People Around You, You Can Dare To Trust Them To Make The Right Moves.

Despite The Fact That Starbucks Has Grown To Be A Large Company. We've Always Played Music In Our Stores And Has Always Acted As An Opportunity To Create A Mood In Our Stores. And Customers Started Asking, "what Song Are You Playing And Can I Buy That?" . And We Said "no." And That Was Kind Of The Catalyst For Beginning To Look At Music. We Started Out With Our Own Compilations And After The Success Of That. We Had The Courage To Say, "let's Produce Our Own Record." And The First Record Was With Ray Charles Before He Unfortunately Passed Away.

My Son Is Trying To Be A Sports Writer, And My Daughter Is A College Student. She Wants To Be A Comedy Writer, And She's At Film School. I Discouraged Both Of Them Early On From Getting Involved In Starbucks. I Didn't Think It Would Be Fair; Plus, They Didn't Have Any Interest Anyway.

On Balance, I Am A Supporter Of The Minimum Wage Going Up. We've Got To Be Very Careful What We Wish For Because Some Employers - And There Could Be A Lot Of Them - Will Be Scared Away From Hiring New People Or Creating Incremental Hours For Part-time People As A Result Of That Wage Going Up.

I Am Concerned About Any Attrition In Customer Traffic At Starbucks, But I Don't Want To Use The Economy, Commodity Prices Or Consumer Confidence As An Excuse.