In April, when Howard Schultz returned to Starbucks for his third and—the company swore—final stint as CEO, the company looked as if it needed coffee. The pandemic had done a number on sales. Shares had stumbled.
One in four baristas was reportedly quitting before even qualifying for the company’s famous benefits. In an industry with notoriously low union representation, Starbucks cafés had steadily begun to unionize, with more than 100 of them asking to hold union elections. In response, Starbucks promised to increase pay raises and improve benefits—for the nonunion employees. A regional office of the National Labor Relations Board accused the company of more than 200 labor violations. Some Wall Street analysts were citing all of the above as reasons to bail.
Schultz had been on the job for a month when he told investors on an earnings call that the coffee juggernaut had reassessed everything that made Starbucks Starbucks. It was prepared to emerge “a truly different kind of company,” according to a concurrent press release, and Schultz reassured investors that Starbucks would, in fact, remain “a growth company.” Just maybe not in the United States.
It’s estimated that a new Starbucks café opens in China every nine hours. There are more Starbucks stores in Shanghai than in any other city in the world. Schultz said in September that China will overtake America as Starbucks’s biggest market by 2025.
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