Triple Tall Americano Double Cup No Room Is the Coffee for Howard Behar of Starbucks Coffee

Howard Behar past President of Starbucks Coffee Company International and author of It’s Not About The Coffee and The Magic Cup joins us on this episode.

It was an honor to have Howard Behar as a guest on the podcast. The stories shared during this episode will inspire you to be a better leader, employee and person.

Howard tells stories about his journey at Starbucks from working for free before being hired to see if he wanted to work to the company to opening the first Starbucks in Japan. The story of how the Frappuccino was developed is example of how you move forward and try something even if you are met with resistance.

This was a friendly conversation and Howard was so open and generous with his time. He is a wonderful storyteller. If you are a fan of Starbucks, Howard Behar, or business this is a must listen to episode.

Howard Behar Episode Transcript

Todd Phillips [00:00:26]:
Welcome to the Exploring Washington State podcast. Here’s your host, Scott Cowan.

Scott Cowan [00:00:32]:
So my guest today is is Howard Behar. First off, thank you for being patient with technology, Howard, as we got this sorted out so we could do this. I mean, I appreciate that, but I would love it if you would just tell our audience Oops.

Howard Behar [00:00:50]:
Alright. So

Scott Cowan [00:00:52]:
Who who who’s giving you a call?

Howard Behar [00:00:55]:
The Staples

Scott Cowan [00:01:00]:
Oh my gosh. So I guess let’s start with this question because you’re known for Starbucks coffee. How did you what was the process for you to get started at Starbucks? And and we’ll call that your introduction. So how did you get started working at Starbucks?

Howard Behar [00:01:16]:
Well, I was about my mid forties, and I I needed a job. I I I had been a president of a land development company, Seattle, and and I started looking for a small company to buy. You know, I was trying to, you know, do something on my own. And I met Howard Schultz right out of the gate. And after I left this company and and, you know, we talked to each other, but what he didn’t feel if it was right, and I was buying trying to buy a company. And a year passed, and he was still looking for somebody to be VP of operations for the company. And and, you know, I said to him, before you make an offer to me and before I think about accepting, can I work in the company for a week for free? Let me just and I I worked in the plant. I worked in the stores.

Howard Behar [00:02:03]:
I worked on the trucks. And after that first week, I fell in love and I said, well, if you want me, I’d like to join Starbucks. And that’s how it happened. I turned right instead of turning left. And, I never in my wildest dreams did I ever expect Starbucks to become what it’s become. I mean, I could could have predicted that.

Scott Cowan [00:02:21]:
So now I have to ask a question because when I started at Starbucks, I was brought in to work in the IT department. So okay. One thing that I thought was amazing at that time, and maybe you were the root cause of it, they required us to go to coffee class. I had to take forty hours of coffee Right. And then I had to work do a shift in the store. Right. Was that a byproduct of your experience where you actually went worked in the plant?

Howard Behar [00:02:47]:
Absolutely. Yeah. I I always felt that people needed to I mean, the storage of what everything where everything happened. It wasn’t that all the rest of our work wasn’t important. It was. IT was important. Accounting was important. Law, legals.

Howard Behar [00:03:00]:
All those things were important. But but everything began and ended in the store. And you needed to understand the people that worked in the stores and the business itself, and that was the only way to do it.

Scott Cowan [00:03:12]:
Yeah. One memory that sticks out to me about my my coffee training class was first off, one of the reasons I wanted to work at Starbucks is because I love coffee. And so I was like, well, what better what better place to work than a a place that serves a lot of coffee? And, you know, I’ve been told that, well, we want, you know, I was told when I went in for my interview and they gave me a tour of the building of the SSC and the coffee centers on every floor. And it was like, oh my gosh, this is unbelievable. But I’m in this class and we’re being taught, you know, the origins of coffee and all of this stuff, which was absolutely fascinating to me. And one person raises their hand, they go, I don’t like coffee. And I was just like, why are you here? I mean, it was so funny to me, like, I don’t like coffee. And I’m like, oh my gosh.

Scott Cowan [00:03:59]:
But for me, that was an amazing part of the journey for me was but so that was a byproduct of your initial coming on board was you wanted to check the company out before you went and I think that’s I think that’s amazing.

Howard Behar [00:04:13]:
How could you know anything, you know, until you work in a place? And, you know, it gave me I mean, after that week, I said, this is my place.

Scott Cowan [00:04:22]:
Okay. So from there, so you you you you you you joined the company, and you what was your job progression through from from when you started to you ended up on the board of directors. Right?

Howard Behar [00:04:36]:
Well, it was at that time, when I joined, there were 28 stores. So, you know, VP of operations was pretty VP of a pretty small company, you know, compared to how it grew. And so my progression went from VP of operations to VP of sales and operations, where I had the retail business and the wholesale business reporting to me. And then I went to EVP, and I had everything that, human resources and everything that touched the customer.

Scott Cowan [00:05:02]:
Wow. Okay.

Howard Behar [00:05:03]:
And I became, I became president of Starbucks, North America, and then I became founding president of Starbucks international. And then I came back after I retired once. Well, then I went on the board when I became president of Starbucks North America. And then, and then I retired once. It was too early for me to retire. And then, you know, by, you know, just out of sure, whatever luck, I guess you might say, I got the invitation to come back for a few months to be lead North America again as president. And, so I it was kinda just, you know, I grew as the company grew. You know? And I had to grow.

Howard Behar [00:05:48]:
I had to change a lot. You know? In the beginning, I could touch everything. After a while, I couldn’t touch anything, you know, hardly. And so I realized that my day job was the people. My night job was the business.

Scott Cowan [00:06:00]:
Okay.

Howard Behar [00:06:01]:
I focused I just focused on the people side of the business. And, you know, first of all, growing me as a people and then helping trying to grow the people in the organization.

Scott Cowan [00:06:13]:
So, in 2021, Starbucks is considered, you know, a global company.

Howard Behar [00:06:19]:
It’s

Scott Cowan [00:06:19]:
on all outward facing, indications are extremely successful and all of those things. We’re not here to talk about that really, but but there was an article I read and I thought this was fascinating. And at the time that you came on with only 28 stores, Starbucks was just located in Washington State or had they branched out yet into the Northwest or was it just in

Howard Behar [00:06:45]:
We, the month I joined, we opened in Portland.

Scott Cowan [00:06:48]:
In Portland. Okay.

Howard Behar [00:06:49]:
Yeah. I joined in August and September, we opened in Portland, but we already had a couple of stores in Vancouver, British Columbia, and a few stores in Chicago.

Scott Cowan [00:06:57]:
But okay. So you say Chicago. So that there was a reference so that you ended up moving to Chicago? Yeah. So you I

Howard Behar [00:07:04]:
I moved for three months because Chicago was losing money. And and the venture capital money was saying, hey. You know, this is just a Northwest deal. This isn’t gonna work any place else because Chicago was losing money. So I said, I gotta figure it out. So the only way I knew how to do it is to go work, work in the stores. And that’s what I did every day for three months. And, and it’s because I wanted to experience firsthand what was going on and see if there was a difference.

Howard Behar [00:07:31]:
And I came back from that experience saying that the problem is that people don’t know us in Chicago. We need to open more stores. That was number one. Number two, we needed to raise prices because our cost of operating in Chicago were a hell of a lot higher than operating in Seattle. But what I sensed is is that the people that were coming into the store were the same kind of people who were coming into the stores in Seattle. They were saying the same thing. They appreciated the same thing. So I had confidence that it was gonna work.

Howard Behar [00:07:59]:
We just had to make some adjustments. And we opened a bunch of new stores, and that started the drumbeat more in Chicago. And we raised prices, and that helped offset the, the increased costs.

Scott Cowan [00:08:12]:
How did you get the venture capitalist though who say it’s a Northwest thing and you come back to them and say, okay. What’s gonna work, but we need more stores. How did you guys how did Starbucks can how did you guys manage that?

Howard Behar [00:08:25]:
Well, I you know, just by raising the prices, that helped us a lot to matching the cost of doing business here. But, you know, we had still had cash so we could open stores. So we just opened about 10 stores and boom, it just took

Scott Cowan [00:08:39]:
off. It just took off. Okay. Yeah. I I when I read that, that you I was so impressed that you went to Chicago to ensure that you did everything you could to ensure the Chicago market was going to be successful.

Howard Behar [00:08:52]:
The only way I know how to do things is to do them hands on, to be there to help, to do it. You know, doing it from a distance doesn’t work.

Scott Cowan [00:09:00]:
Then you were instrumental in opening up the international markets for Starbucks. Yeah. Correct? I can’t imagine that it went flawlessly. No. I have to imagine that

Howard Behar [00:09:13]:
there were That’s our guy, you know that?

Scott Cowan [00:09:15]:
Yeah. Thank you for that. But what in there must be a story that you can share. What what surprised you about opening in the international the the thought might have went better or worse, but it the the you were surprised by it.

Howard Behar [00:09:37]:
Well, I guess, I don’t know if I would call it surprised. I was, I was unprepared for I was always a relationship person, you know, always a people guy, but I was unprepared for how deep that was in in particularly the Asian markets that we took first. And Jinlong Wang, who was my right arm, you know, he was from China, and and he he sent me a quote one day. He said, big noise on stairs, nothing coming down, you know. He was talking about me, you know. And, so I had to adjust my expectations. Things weren’t gonna move as fast as I thought they wanted should move. And so I had to understand that the most important thing I was gonna do there was to build relationships, and that may take time to do it.

Howard Behar [00:10:28]:
And so I had to change myself. The other thing, that one thing that did surprise me was the difficulty in many markets of opening stores. I mean, every country has its own stuff. You know, we have our own blocks. You know, We have all protection mechanisms, and every country had its own. And Japan being our first market had a lot of them that were unwritten a lot of them. You just had to learn them as you went, and no nobody would necessarily tell you about them until you ask the question. And, you know, we had it like the espresso machine, a La Marzocco that we imported from Italy.

Howard Behar [00:11:05]:
And we did get that into Japan. We had to basically tear it apart, have every screw tested, all the metal tested, everything, all the plastics that were in that thing tested, right, in order to get it imported. And, you know, not that there was anything wrong with it or anything. It was a piece of machinery, but those were part of the rules. And so, yeah, I pushed back on that in the beginning, but I wasn’t gonna change that. And I finally said, I can’t push back. We gotta be the best at this. We gotta be better than the Japanese companies are at complying with all the rules and the regulations.

Howard Behar [00:11:38]:
And so once we got used to doing that, we did that in every country, and that helped us. So that was probably the biggest surprise is how difficult it was gonna be. I I I didn’t think that would be the issue. I thought opening stores would be easy. Getting open would be easy, but the difficulty would be attracting the customers. But it was the opposite.

Scott Cowan [00:11:57]:
Just the opposite.

Howard Behar [00:11:58]:
Customers came rolling in and, you know, but opening stores, particularly at the beginning of it, was difficult.

Scott Cowan [00:12:05]:
So I’d like to clarify something. So when you said you had to have the machine tested, did just one machine or did you have to have it each machine that was brought?

Howard Behar [00:12:14]:
Just one. Okay.

Scott Cowan [00:12:15]:
Okay. I was gonna say, wow.

Howard Behar [00:12:16]:
Basically, we had they wanted to know what was in each part, you know, what was in the middle, what was, you know.

Scott Cowan [00:12:21]:
Wow. Okay. I I would not have guessed that. I would have thought that I when I think of Japan, I think of tea as the culture, and I would have thought that maybe coffee. But also when I was working there and we were opening up the it was obvious that the Japanese market was they were they embraced Starbucks.

Howard Behar [00:12:44]:
Well, yeah. I mean, Japan was a big coffee consuming country. It was like third or fourth in the world. They had these stores called Keesetan, which basically where men went to consume coffee and smoked cigarettes. And and coffee was very important there. The quality of their coffee was really good. And, and there were other competitors kinda like us, that were already open there. And, you know, we had a different point of view, and and we just believed, and I believed.

Howard Behar [00:13:11]:
I believed that Japan was work. I was scared, you know, I was I was, I wasn’t betting the company, but but I was betting my reputation because I chose Japan as a free market. And and so but it worked, you know, amazing.

Scott Cowan [00:13:26]:
So, there was also a story that I read. So, one of the things when I, you know, my timeline at Starbucks was, when Frappuccino was rolled out.

Howard Behar [00:13:35]:
Right.

Scott Cowan [00:13:36]:
And I was reading a story, once again, you hands on. You were down in Southern California visiting a store. Yeah. As I this is what I read, so I’m gonna ask you to Yeah. Validate my my story. I read that you were I think I wanna say Santa Monica.

Howard Behar [00:13:52]:
That’s right. It was. Third Street Brewery.

Scott Cowan [00:13:54]:
And you walked in as as the article read, you walked in and you asked somebody, and we’ll say the manager, why there was a blender in the store.

Howard Behar [00:14:02]:
Yeah. It wasn’t quite that. It was actually,

Scott Cowan [00:14:05]:
it was

Howard Behar [00:14:05]:
Dina Campion had invited me down to visit. She was the district manager down there. And I went to visit her, and she took me on a tour of our stores because we had just had a few stores at that time. And then on a tour of some competitor stores, and one of the competitor stores, she brought me a drink. And she said, you know, we’re getting people coming into our store every day asking for a drink like this. We have nothing like it. And so I said, really? How many drinks do you think we could sell a day? She says, oh, at least 30 per store per day. That was pretty good because these drinks were, like, $34 a drink.

Scott Cowan [00:14:39]:
Right.

Howard Behar [00:14:39]:
I said, that’s a great idea. Let me take it back to Seattle and see if I can get people to agree that we should test something like this. And I took it back to Seattle. There was complete rejection of us doing it because it wasn’t coffee.

Scott Cowan [00:14:52]:
Coffee.

Howard Behar [00:14:52]:
Yeah. And so, you know, Dana was disappointed. I was disappointed, but I let it go. And then Dana called me back about a month later after I reject we’d rejected. Can you come down and visit again? And so I went down and visited her again, and I she said, go sit down on one of the bar stools, which I did. And she brought me three little sample cups, and she says, try these. And I took a sip, and then I said, Dana, this tastes remarkably like the drink we tried at the competitor store. And I said, how did you do this? And she says, well, we went and bought the blenders.

Howard Behar [00:15:28]:
We bought the nonfat milk solids. We bought the chocolate. We did we bought everything and we fiddled with it, and we came up with this drink. And I said, are you trying to get me fired? You know? You know? And she said, no. We have to test this out. We’re getting about 30 to 40 people a day coming in. This is killing us. You know, we we just have they just walk out when we don’t have anything like it.

Howard Behar [00:15:48]:
So I you know, it’s one of those things that you do sometimes in life. You know, you have to make a decision that goes against the grain or goes against somebody else’s deal. And I always believe as long as you’re not poisoning anybody or not breaking laws, that you ought to be able to try things. So I said, okay. Try it. But don’t tell a soul. No signage up on top. You could your baristas can talk about it.

Howard Behar [00:16:11]:
You can have little signs on the counter or something like that. I try I want you to call me every night and tell me how it’s going. Because if it’s not going well, we’re gonna get rid of it real quick or somebody finds out, particularly Schultz. You know? And so it just started and she not only sold 30 drinks a day, but by the, by the third week, she was saying, selling 70 drinks a day per store. That was huge. And I’m thinking to myself, I am a brilliant guy, you know, but it was Dina Campion that made it happen. It wasn’t me. I, all I did was, was give her cover to do it.

Howard Behar [00:16:43]:
And and so then I brought after we had that, I said, we gotta we gotta roll this out. So I I brought her her and her team up to Seattle and call another meeting, and Howard Schultz came in the head of marketing, guy named George, and George was the one that really didn’t want it. And so I I had to bring in the sample cups and everybody tried it, and and George got really mad at me. Said, Howard, I’m the head of product development. You’re not. I told you we weren’t gonna do this. You stop the smell. And I looked at Howard.

Howard Behar [00:17:13]:
I said, give me ninety days. If you don’t like it ninety days, if you just don’t like the smell, we’ll get rid of it. And I’ve been in retail long enough. If something is selling, you never get rid of it. Howard hated it. Yeah. I mean, he was for the same reason. He didn’t think it was coffee, and it wasn’t.

Howard Behar [00:17:28]:
Frappuccino, we put coffee in it. Sure. And, also, we sold it without coffee, and he he you know, and it was blended. He didn’t think we should do it. I mean, I I I remember. I mean, the arguments we had over it, you know, and, you know, but it it became 20% of our sales at one time.

Scott Cowan [00:17:45]:
What I remember was it, in my opinion, it it it gave the stores a PM in the afternoon.

Howard Behar [00:17:55]:
That’s what it did.

Scott Cowan [00:17:55]:
People came in. They might not have come they might have gone into Starbucks and grabbed their morning cup of coffee on the way to work. Maybe go back in the lunchtime, but after lunch, the stores were pretty empty. Yeah. And this brought more and more, you know, it sold. And then not only that, it’s a massive line of of products for the company now. Yeah.

Howard Behar [00:18:20]:
If you’re a little younger, that made a difference too. So we attracted younger high school knowledge, you know, kids coming in to get that drink. Yeah. I mean, it was a blowout success without a question.

Scott Cowan [00:18:31]:
So that brings me to the question I warned you about before I pushed record. When I started there, there was a product that had launched and had failed quite quickly. And, personally, I loved it. What is your opinion on Mazatlan?

Howard Behar [00:18:46]:
Mazatlan. I have a bottle of Mazatlan and, and, you know, those things that you bury in plexiglass, it’s solid. Yeah. I have it sitting in my desk, not here, but in my in Seattle. And I look at that thing every day, and I remind myself how from great failure can come great success. We all thought that product was gonna be a blowout success. We did research. It was a joint venture with Pepsi.

Howard Behar [00:19:09]:
The bottle was beautiful. It was a coffee cola. I mean, it went out, and three weeks later, we knew it was dead. We liked it, but nobody else liked it. You know? And and so but it spawned frappuccino bottled frappuccino. Right? Without that, we wouldn’t have thought about doing bottled frappuccino. A bottle of frappuccino has been a great success. So, you know, you try things, it doesn’t work, you go on.

Howard Behar [00:19:34]:
You know? From failure comes success.

Scott Cowan [00:19:37]:
Thank you for that because I one of my questions I’d love to ask us are, you know, what did you think was a great idea that didn’t work? Because you almost always learn some valuable lesson. Absolutely. And and I remember when I first started there, somebody gave me a ball of this, and they said, try it. I think it was like a hazing thing. Like, they were thinking I was gonna spit it out and be like, I really liked it.

Howard Behar [00:20:00]:
Well, I almost liked it, but it I really liked it. And I’m like Chantico? That chocolate was a hot chocolate. Oh, yes. A little cup, and it was Yes. Drinking at, chocolate bar while he melted. And we loved it. We thought it was fantastic. Hey, people.

Howard Behar [00:20:19]:
It was it was it was a good product. Both these products were good product, but there was just no acceptance for them for two different reasons. But, you know, so what?

Scott Cowan [00:20:28]:
But like you said, out of the the the Mazatlan came the the seed of bottled frappuccino. Yeah. Exactly. And also, wasn’t it how they, well, we won’t go we won’t go down the technical rabbit hole on that. But that was my question to you, and I thank you. I couldn’t have expected a more amazing answer from you. Another question I like to ask my guests, and I jokingly say, and I hope you appreciate this. I jokingly ask the question, where’s your favorite place or what’s the best what’s your favorite cup of coffee if If you’re a coffee drinker and I always joke and say, please don’t say Starbucks just because it’s such the answer.

Scott Cowan [00:21:10]:
But with you, I’m gonna expect that you’re going to say Starbucks, but I’m gonna so I wanna change my question to you. Where’s your favorite Starbucks location?

Howard Behar [00:21:19]:
My favorite Starbucks location? Boy, that’s a hard question to answer because I, you know, I have been involved in so many openings of stores, and they all have their different drumbeat. They all are Mhmm. Speaking their own way. Let’s see. What would I say my favorite Starbucks location would be?

Scott Cowan [00:21:38]:
Or let me let me yeah. Maybe let me take you off the hook and let not say your favorite.

Howard Behar [00:21:41]:
Let’s say You don’t have to take me off the hook.

Scott Cowan [00:21:43]:
Okay. You’re on the hook.

Howard Behar [00:21:44]:
I would say Shibuya in Japan.

Scott Cowan [00:21:47]:
Okay. So why is that?

Howard Behar [00:21:49]:
Because it was the most difficult store to make work. It had only 900 square feet of service area, and we had to do 2,000 customers a day through 900 square feet. And the difficulty of it and that’s where we put the first semiautomated espresso machines in. You know? And we had to do it. We didn’t have a choice. You know? So it’s it’s not because it’s somehow more beautiful than the rest. It’s, it was a challenge to do. It’s, where we broke some more rules by putting in those semiautomated espresso machines that should save it.

Howard Behar [00:22:22]:
And Mhmm. And it worked in 900 square feet. It was amazing.

Scott Cowan [00:22:27]:
K.

Howard Behar [00:22:28]:
And so it it’s it’s for that reason. I have other stores that I think are just incredibly beautiful and and, you know, that, usually for me, though, it’s always the people.

Scott Cowan [00:22:39]:
Okay.

Howard Behar [00:22:40]:
It’s always the one closest to. Like, I live right now I’m up in, you know, Anacortes. So, there’s a store in Downtown Anacortes and one in Burlington, those two stores I go to. So I love the people in there because, you know.

Scott Cowan [00:22:53]:
So when you go to the Anacortes of Burlington store, what are you ordering?

Howard Behar [00:22:58]:
A triple tall Americano double cup, no room.

Scott Cowan [00:23:02]:
Very specific. I like that.

Howard Behar [00:23:03]:
That’s what I drink. You can count on one I you know, Frappuccino, I pushed it, all that stuff. I probably have drinking three Frappuccino in my life. Right? I I used to drink cappuccinos, you know. Okay. I still do once in a while, but hardly ever. I never drank lattes, and I never drank mochas or anything like that ever. I mean, I’d had them.

Howard Behar [00:23:23]:
I’d sipped them, but I to try them, but I but I I’m a black coffee drinker. And my favorite coffee is Ethiopian Harar.

Scott Cowan [00:23:32]:
So when you’re at home, are you how do you prepare do you drink coffee at home?

Howard Behar [00:23:38]:
Yeah. Oh, absolutely. I have a coffee drinker.

Scott Cowan [00:23:41]:
Okay. How do you prepare your coffee at home? What do

Howard Behar [00:23:43]:
you espresso machine and Americanos. Okay. Yeah. I have a really nice Dura Espresso machine, and it’s an amazing piece of equipment and, it does a great job.

Scott Cowan [00:23:56]:
K. How are you how do you feel about the, clover machines?

Howard Behar [00:24:01]:
I like I mean, I think clover is good. I mean, you know, it’s the clover was just an automated way of of doing a really clean press spot.

Scott Cowan [00:24:10]:
Mhmm.

Howard Behar [00:24:10]:
I mean, you know, where they took out all the grounds were taken out and everything. It’s just real, really clean. You know? It’s, but, you know, I like it. I think it produces an interesting cup of coffee. It’s not my cup of coffee. It’s too clean for me. I I I I I I want it I wanna I want it to bite a little bit, you know, a little granulated. Yeah.

Howard Behar [00:24:31]:
Okay. So

Scott Cowan [00:24:33]:
So when we moved to Wenatchee. From the Tacoma area. A few years ago, First time we came over here, stopped at Starbucks and I was, you can ask my wife, she was like, oh, he’s like a kid. Because the Wenatchee, One of the Wenatchee locations has a clover machine. And I was like, oh my God, Tacoma didn’t have any that I knew of at that time. And, I always just thought the clover was a fascinating, way of bringing and presenting other coffees too. That was the thing about it. We could

Howard Behar [00:25:00]:
do that. We could do it, you know, an expensive way to make a cup of coffee. It was one coffee at a time. One one cup, but but it’s, but it was it’s really it’s good. It’s really it’s interesting. I mean, it it you know, you know, it’s not gonna discolor your teeth. You know what I mean?

Scott Cowan [00:25:17]:
Alright. So let me ask you. Have you ever been to, is it on Pike Or Pine, the roastery, location? Yeah.

Howard Behar [00:25:25]:
On Pike Or Pine. Yeah.

Scott Cowan [00:25:26]:
So I describe that as coffee meeting Las Vegas and Disneyland smashed together.

Howard Behar [00:25:34]:
Yeah. Exactly.

Scott Cowan [00:25:36]:
I think if I lived in Seattle, that is not where I would go to have a cup of coffee. I would absolutely visit it, but I would not go there to have a cup of coffee. But the absolute, my most favorite, not only coffee experience, but food experience came from sitting at the counter. And the barista’s name was Lincoln. He was from Spokane. I’m sitting there with my friend, Jim Hunger, who I met when I started working at Starbucks, and we’re having a siphon press. Each of us had a siphon press and somebody walked by with a tray and a highball glass with one ice cube in it and coffee. And I’m like, what’s that? And he goes, oh, that’s our whiskey aged Guatemalan or something to that effect.

Scott Cowan [00:26:21]:
Right? I go, I’d like one of those, please. I had no idea what I was about to experience. It was the most magical food experience I’ve ever had in my life. It was absolutely delicious. And like I said, I’m there with my friend Jim. We’re walking around. I see that the coffee is for sale. And since I’m staying with my friend Jim and his mother’s a friend of mine, I said I’d like you know, was it half pound bags? I said I’d like two pounds, please.

Scott Cowan [00:26:51]:
So, I bought four bags and I didn’t check that it was $80 a pound. I had a little sticker shock. And I must say, I gave the coffee to them. I each gave them a half a pound. And then I came home and I was trying to make coffee at home with it and I failed miserably. But I will say that that is my absolute favorite food experience in my world. Do you and I know that those were created after your your time being active there, but those are almost like amusement parks or coffee fans.

Howard Behar [00:27:29]:
Yeah. Yeah. No question. They’re I mean, they’re so interesting, very expensive to build, you know. And, I think I

Scott Cowan [00:27:34]:
can’t imagine why.

Howard Behar [00:27:35]:
Complex and, you know, but but, you know, it it sends a message. People people love it, and it’s that store is busy all the time. I’m always amazed. I hardly ever go there once. Now only if I have a somebody, a friend coming into town, you know, I take them up there to see it, show them that store.

Scott Cowan [00:27:54]:
The one I’d like to see is the the one in Chicago.

Howard Behar [00:27:56]:
Yeah. Well, that’s like four stories or something.

Scott Cowan [00:27:58]:
Four stories. I was like Yeah.

Howard Behar [00:27:59]:
And I know that rolling well. That was a that was a Crate and Barrel building.

Scott Cowan [00:28:04]:
That’s right. That’s right. So during your time at Starbucks, you know, you you now are doing you’ve written two books. Yeah. You you have, you know, servant leadership, conscious capitalism, you talk about one hat. How did you develop those concepts? And I don’t, you know, they’re not necessarily, you know, I don’t think conscious capitalism, you coined that.

Howard Behar [00:28:28]:
I didn’t quite coined that phrase. That was John McAfee from Whole Foods.

Scott Cowan [00:28:32]:
So but how how did your time at Starbucks lead you to the these?

Howard Behar [00:28:38]:
I I what? I brought it with me.

Scott Cowan [00:28:40]:
You brought with me? Yeah.

Howard Behar [00:28:41]:
I hey, Dan. It, you know, I was 40 when I joined Starbucks, I was 44 years old. I was pretty well formed. I had been studying servant leadership for, at that time, twenty years.

Scott Cowan [00:28:53]:
Okay.

Howard Behar [00:28:53]:
And, from, you know, Robert Greenleaf, coined the term servant leadership. And, so, you know, I’d try I wanted to be a conscious competent at servant leadership. I wanted to be able to understand it. I wanna be able to teach it. And Mhmm. So I brought that with me, and that’s what I tried to drive at Starbucks. I just believe that that was a way to lead an organization, is that you served your people first before you expected them to serve you. And so, you know, I that was really important to me, and I was relentless about it.

Howard Behar [00:29:25]:
You know, I just one of the advantages I had was I had a lot of responsibility in a small company, and I could, I could make things happen there, you know, and so I did. And I I was not you know, I wasn’t gonna let go

Scott Cowan [00:29:41]:
of that because it was

Howard Behar [00:29:42]:
what mattered to me. Before I joined Starbucks, you know, I was looking to like I told you, I was looking to buy a company, and I had, this list of all the things that I wanted inside this company that I was gonna buy, what how I wanted to operate. Everybody got to vote, you know, in their own area of expertise and give input in any area any area. And that I turned that into the person who sweeps the floor should choose the room. Mhmm. That that everybody would get equity in the company, that everybody would be would be an owner of the company. And, and Howard and I agreed on all those things. And that’s what made me wanna be there, you know.

Howard Behar [00:30:20]:
And, you know, we had certainly different management styles and and different views of how to lead, you know, that were were were sometimes conflicting. I mean, really conflicted, but but, you know, it it’s that’s what I wanted to do. I wanted to run a company like that. And so that’s what we drove. And Oren was that way too.

Scott Cowan [00:30:42]:
Well, and certainly in during my time there, that was the cult that was the culture. Yeah. And it was unlike anything I had experienced, because I started there in ’97. And so I was in my mid thirties and I started off, I was probably one of the first non Starbucks managers to be in the IT in the Help Desk in the IT department. So, I wasn’t I was definitely an outsider at first. And that didn’t last very long in the sense that I was, yeah, the culture there, it was great. It was and it was it was, deeply embedded in all the partners that they

Howard Behar [00:31:28]:
believed it. I mean, that was why I say the people were my day job. The business was my night job. You know, there became a point in time where that is what I focus on, period. And, you know, I gave the same speech a thousand different times in a thousand different ways, but always said people first, coffee second. And, and, you know, you could it was hard to get fired at Starbucks for missing your numbers. It was easy to get fired at Starbucks if you mess with the people. And, you know, and I that is still important to this day.

Howard Behar [00:31:59]:
You know, it hasn’t been a perfect place. It’s been it’s had its ups and it’s had its downs and we’ve made lots of mistakes along the way and didn’t didn’t didn’t, treat always treat people as well as we should have. And, you know, I regret those times, but for the most part, we self corrected. You know? Mhmm. We self corrected. And and, you know, I’m proud of the company. I mean, I I I I’m really proud of how they handled COVID. I mean, they, you know, they kept Boris’s on.

Howard Behar [00:32:28]:
They kept everybody had kept their health care benefits even when they weren’t working. They paid people for a long period of time when they weren’t working. They did everything they could to to help people through it. And that not very many companies did that, and I’m I’m proud of that.

Scott Cowan [00:32:44]:
No. They they you’re right. And that’s something to be proud of. What was your motivation to becoming an

Howard Behar [00:32:52]:
author? I wasn’t really that motivated. Yeah. It was I had there was, there were two women that worked for the company. One headed up marketing for international. Another one was a consultant that we’d use, and they kept saying, I have these quotes on my wall. You know, I was what I I was famous for having hundreds of quotes on my office wall. And they’d come in and say, why don’t we put these all into a book? And I said, you’re kidding me. I can’t write.

Howard Behar [00:33:19]:
I don’t write. I mean, my English teacher would have said the only reason I would ever have my name on a book is if I had written it there myself. So if somebody had known whose it was, they kept saying to do it. And I and I just drove me nuts. And I finally said to him, if you’re so interested in me writing a book, why don’t you write it for me? Well, they started the process of doing that, and I had kept, through my whole career, I had had this file that it grew over time. It finally got to me really about a foot thick. Wow. I put little notes in there, just ideas that came to me, quotes that I’d seen, thoughts that I had.

Howard Behar [00:33:53]:
Sometimes they’re little scraps of paper into this file. And so that became the framework for the book. I took that file and I started throwing them on the floor in in different piles for different subjects, you know, different Okay. And those became the chapters of the book. And that’s how it started. Now that one of them got pregnant and and moved on. And the other one, got a big consulting agreement, didn’t have time to do it. And so here I was left with the beginning of this book, and I hired somebody that they introduced me to, a woman named Janet Goldstein, who really was the writer.

Howard Behar [00:34:26]:
I mean, we did it together, but I Mhmm. I was not even close to her skills. And, but what I had were the ideas, and I had the stories and the and what it was. And so that’s how it came. Came. I would never call myself a writer. I I got better at it as time went on. Then the second book, still had a lot of help, but but I got better at it.

Howard Behar [00:34:47]:
I’m starting to work on a third book right now.

Scott Cowan [00:34:50]:
You are. So what’s can you share what the

Howard Behar [00:34:53]:
Yeah. It’s basically I’ve been posting on LinkedIn and Twitter for five years now, every day. So I’ve got thousands of these items. And so we’re gonna take probably a hundred of them and put them in a book and put stories with each the most favorite my most favorite ones are the ones that the people like the best and tell stories behind them, where they came from and what they’re about. And

Scott Cowan [00:35:19]:
May I put you on the spot and ask you to give an example?

Howard Behar [00:35:23]:
Well, let’s see. What would be, what would be one? I haven’t even you know, you’re you’re way ahead of me on it. Well, let’s take the person who’s the floor should choose the broom.

Scott Cowan [00:35:36]:
Okay.

Howard Behar [00:35:36]:
Came from because growing up, I when I was working, I had this tremendous desire to matter. I wanted to make a difference, and I wanted to be respected for that that idea that I mattered and that my ideas mattered. And I always felt that other people should too. And so, you know, I always believe that if you go ahead and you hire somebody, you know, give them room. Let them fly. You know, tell them what you expect from them. You know, tell them why we’re here. What’s your purpose of this place? And but don’t tell them how to do their job.

Howard Behar [00:36:10]:
Get out of their way and knock the hurdles down. And so those that it’s those kind of stories and those things Frappuccino. That’s how Frappuccino came about. Was, you know, the person it was Dina and her broom, basically. You know? She had goals to accomplish and her idea was she had to grow the business, and this was a way of growing the business. And so it’s those kinds of things that we’re gonna do.

Scott Cowan [00:36:33]:
Okay.

Howard Behar [00:36:35]:
It it’s gonna be a simple book, you know, because I I’m a simple person. And, it it’s, it’s gonna be a fun read. It’s gonna be one of those things that you can sit down on your toilet and probably read in a night. And and then you look back over it saying, hey. I like this one. I wanna learn more about this.

Scott Cowan [00:36:53]:
Okay. Well, we’ll just I hope I hope my editor doesn’t lead that with the we always start off the episodes with a quote from the episode, you know, where we’ll take a snippet. Let’s not lead with that one. Okay. I just think The Magic Cup. I just finished that. Actually, I finished that yesterday. What inspired you to write that? Anger.

Scott Cowan [00:37:16]:
Okay.

Howard Behar [00:37:17]:
I I left start when I retired from Starbucks, I was angry. I was angry at Howard, and I was angry because we did all those layoffs that I didn’t think that we needed to do. And and, I was just angry about a lot of things about that. And and over time, I let it go, but it that’s where it started. It I just you know, that was the idea of the paint slip flowing down from heaven and the board of directors not knowing what was going on. A guy that was running the company not caring. It wasn’t that Howard didn’t care he did, but but I was angry at him. And that’s where it came from.

Howard Behar [00:37:51]:
And it was, it it’s I was depressed for two years after I left Starbucks, because, you know, I always just say to people, Starbucks is not you and you’re not it, but I fell into the trap. It was me. And it mattered to me as much as it mattered to Howard. And and so it came out of there, and I wanted to write I wanted to write, you know, fiction, but that was really based in truth. All of that book is based it’s it’s fiction. It’s where Harry Potter meets business, so to speak. But it was all about leadership. It was all about this idea that you care about your people, that, you know, that you don’t tell people lies.

Howard Behar [00:38:31]:
You don’t, you know, you don’t do layoffs when they’re not necessary. You don’t, you know, you do the right thing. And and the the, you know, the boogeyman or the spider chasing it, that’s your fear. That’s what it is. It’s fear. They’re not real. Mhmm. Went through all those layoffs.

Howard Behar [00:38:46]:
That was just fear. That was reacting, being fearful of what we thought was wrong when it wasn’t what it was. You know? Howard thought that it was it was operations. It was at fault. So there’s something wrong with operations. I don’t know if you were there then, but but I

Scott Cowan [00:39:02]:
was not.

Howard Behar [00:39:03]:
But he he wanted to change a whole bunch of things. You know, there were about 10 things, and I won’t go through them all. And but it wasn’t those things. It wasn’t the problem. I mean, were the stores dirty or maybe in some places? Yeah. Of course. And they you know, those things happen, but and it wasn’t the people. It was the economy, stupid.

Howard Behar [00:39:23]:
And we just felt it earlier than other people did. That’s all. And that’s what it was. And and so it was came out of that spot, and I was trying to tell the story, you know, about that. Wasn’t just about Starbucks. It was about other times. You know, other places I’ve gone to and other people I’d reported to my life.

Scott Cowan [00:39:43]:
You grew up in the Seattle area. You spent most of your life in the Northwest. Yeah. Correct? Yeah. So when you when so when you’re not well, what do you do for fun and excitement? What what about the what about the Northwest do you find to be enjoyable?

Howard Behar [00:40:03]:
The water. The Puget Sound, the San Juan Islands, the Gulf Islands Of Canada. Being I I live right on the water in Puget Sound and up by Anand, of course, I have a little 20 foot skip, and as soon as crab season opens, I’m out there every day. I You’re

Scott Cowan [00:40:19]:
out there every day.

Howard Behar [00:40:20]:
On my beach. I dig clams. You know, I’m not so much of a fisherman anymore. I still fish once in a while, but but it’s that. It’s the sheer beauty of it, and it’s the water. I just love it.

Scott Cowan [00:40:32]:
And has has that always been true for you? Or is that something?

Howard Behar [00:40:34]:
Pretty much. My father was a great fisherman, and he used to take me when I was five years old. And in those days, Puget, Elliott Bay. You’d go out in Elliott Bay, and you’d go out about just a daybreak. And by 11:00 in the morning, you had 12 fish, servers. Right? Wow. That bay was full of salmon. And then we’d go up to the South End of Whidbey Island, fish, possession point.

Howard Behar [00:41:00]:
No point. We fish out in front of Edmonds. We fish up Bush Point, which is on the West Side of WhidbeyIsland. And and so, you know, we go we’d stay in Whidbey Island for the summer every year, you know, and big clams. And I mean, just just that I’ve always been a testist. I’ve always had a boat of some kind.

Scott Cowan [00:41:19]:
You’ve always had a boat. So what was your favorite boat? Oh, the last Was there one that was, you know The

Howard Behar [00:41:26]:
last boat. It was a 73 footed Ocean Alexander, and it was a kind of a trawler style, and it was a fantastic boat. And I had a stroke, and I and, and I just it overwhelmed me running running the boat, and I said it’s time to sell it. And so we we just say we’ll get a place in the water instead of having a boat.

Scott Cowan [00:41:46]:
So the 73 foot boat Yeah. That’s really to me, that’s a very large boat.

Howard Behar [00:41:50]:
Yeah.

Scott Cowan [00:41:52]:
Did you captain it yourself?

Howard Behar [00:41:54]:
My wife and I ran that boat. Yeah. Yeah. I didn’t wanna I didn’t wanna go for a ride, you know. I wanted to run the boat. And so, you know, I did I work on all of it. No. But I could change the oil, and I could I could troubleshoot all sorts of problem.

Howard Behar [00:42:07]:
I could keep us from sinking, which it almost did once. Yep. Really? I made lots of mistakes. One time I ran at the ground up in Alaska. You know?

Scott Cowan [00:42:17]:
Okay. Can do you mind sharing? How did you at least do that?

Howard Behar [00:42:21]:
Yeah. Boater, I was looking on the charts, and there was this. I was trying to get back to Ketchikan, and there was this pass called Rocky Pass. Now I know why it’s called Rocky Pass. So I said, well, okay. I see how it’s charted and it was marked. And I thought I can do this. I can get through there.

Howard Behar [00:42:39]:
It was I knew it was gonna be tight, but I think I can do it. So I pull in and we anchor outside the Rocky Pass the night before, and I get up in the morning and getting the boat ready to go. And and I was looking at the tide charts and looking at the time, and I misjudged the time by two hours.

Scott Cowan [00:42:56]:
Okay. It was

Howard Behar [00:42:57]:
a lot shallower than I thought it was gonna be. So I started going down Rocky Pass, and all of a sudden, one of my one of my engines shuts down, and my boat hits sand. So the the prop had hit a hit a rock, and when that happens, it just shuts the engine down. So I said, oh, shit. So then what am I gonna do now? So I waited until the tide came up and I tried to back out. The other prop hits a rock. So now I’m in trouble. I got one prop that I can get, and I’m get trying to get out of finally, I got out of there, and I limped back to Ketchikan.

Howard Behar [00:43:30]:
And $30,000 later, trying to fix the bottom of the boat and fix the props, which were never right. I had to get back to Seattle to get them remade. And but that’s so, you know, that was, you know, dumb, dumb, dumb, dumb, dumb and dumber.

Scott Cowan [00:43:47]:
Oh my gosh. Oh, wow. Alright. Besides the water, what what is what else do you and your and your and your wife like to do? What’s entertaining for you?

Howard Behar [00:43:57]:
What’s entertaining for me today? Oh, god. You know, I’d like to tell you that I’m a real hobbyist. I’m not. I never have been. Okay. My hobby

Scott Cowan [00:44:06]:
That’s okay.

Howard Behar [00:44:07]:
To walk the malls and look at what’s going on in retail. I like that. You know, I think spending time with my grandkids, I like to do that and spending time with my wife. And this last year, I we’ve never spent this kind of time amount of time together. We’ve never cooked as many meals at home as we did this last year, but we did. And so I like that. I like to go for walks on the beach. I like to, you know, go for walks with the dogs.

Howard Behar [00:44:31]:
My dogs are that changed my life. These two dogs are I got them after I my my doctor said, you need a dog. You need to slow down. You know? Okay. You’re gonna kill yourself. And so I got the first dog and certainly changed my life. And then we got the second one. It really changed my life, and they’re my buddies, you know?

Scott Cowan [00:44:49]:
That’s So And are your are your grandkids in the area?

Howard Behar [00:44:53]:
Yeah. My kids both live in, in Madrona area, Seattle. Okay. And so and I have six grandkids. So two of them, one is graduating from high school, getting ready to call go to college. The oldest one is going to college already, and then I’ve got four more.

Scott Cowan [00:45:08]:
Yeah. My my two grandchildren live in Europe, so I don’t get to see them very often, but it’s you get to with technology now, we can do what you

Howard Behar [00:45:15]:
Yeah. Right. You could do that. But now now you could

Scott Cowan [00:45:18]:
do it. You said something. You said you like to walk them all and look at retail. Yeah. And so what I’m about to ask you, you would say logic your answer will be you wouldn’t do it, but play along. Yeah. If you were gonna open a business today, what would it be? So I was

Howard Behar [00:45:36]:
gonna open a business today, you mean this product, you mean? Or

Scott Cowan [00:45:39]:
Yeah. Well, just, you know, looking at your the way you’re looking at the world, what you you see things through your eyes. Yeah. What would you do?

Howard Behar [00:45:48]:
That would be something to do with food, not necessarily a restaurant. I think there’s a real opportunity for a miniature store in neighborhoods like seven eleven, but not a seven eleven. It’s high quality. It’s pre prepared meals, or, you know, where you could carve off a piece of turkey that was in The Cape or something. It, you know, it’d be small, easy to get through, but, you know, and we’re starting to see them pop up. If you go to New York, you see them. You know? Okay. And and you certainly see them all over Europe.

Howard Behar [00:46:19]:
I think that’s a wave of the future. I think we’re gonna be doing a lot more of that. And we’re not you know, I think this home delivery thing is gonna be problematic for because the cost of doing it is huge. And and and the companies are doing it or basically doing it on the backs of people.

Scott Cowan [00:46:39]:
Mhmm.

Howard Behar [00:46:40]:
And that isn’t gonna last. And so now if you order a pizza online, I’ve done I mean, I for $20 pizza, I’ve paid over $40 by the time it gets to my house. You know? It’s I just don’t see how people are continue to afford it or why they would do it. I’m not gonna do it. You know? I’ll go pick it up. You know? You know? For $20, I can spend fifteen minutes, you know, or whatever it is. Or or I can walk her on the street or whatever it happens to be. But but I think this idea of it just a little neighborhood kinda, high quality, convenience place to go get meals.

Howard Behar [00:47:16]:
Okay. Or a nice bottle of wine or, you know, something like that.

Scott Cowan [00:47:21]:
So kind of I mean, for lack of a, you know, not to but like a whole a small, convenience model like

Howard Behar [00:47:28]:
a whole foods, but small. They’re really small. They don’t sell they don’t sell soap. They don’t you know? Right? They’re not Literally. They’re not selling toilet paper. It’s not that kind of place. It’s focused around food.

Scott Cowan [00:47:42]:
Okay. What else when you walk when you walk the mall, what else are you noticing? Because I don’t go to the mall. This is that’s one thing. I’ve never been a mall fan. So I’m curious. What’s your observations of walking through the mall? I don’t know when the last time you walked through a mall. When was the last time you walked through

Howard Behar [00:47:57]:
a mall? Oh, about a month ago.

Scott Cowan [00:47:59]:
No. What what what have you noticed? What did you observe when you walked through? Does retail in the in the mall space seem healthy to you? Or is it

Howard Behar [00:48:10]:
No. Not at all. It’s not. I it’s, I don’t there’s not you know, there’s this lack of the prop you know, the Internet has really changed retail. And Amazon, without a question, has really changed retail. And I I think what you you see in the mall is less help than you used to see. You walk into a store, it’s hard to find somebody to help you. There are not very many creative stores things.

Howard Behar [00:48:40]:
You know, the problem with the Internet and Amazon is they’re great at transaction. They’re very they’re not very good at bringing you something that’s unique or that you know what I mean?

Scott Cowan [00:48:51]:
Mhmm. I agree.

Howard Behar [00:48:52]:
It’s and so, you know, it used to be go to the mall and you’d shop, and you said, wow. Look at that. You don’t get that experience very often anymore. You’d walk past like Too much sameness, sameness, sameness, you know? And I was on the board of the Gap for about eight eight years, and I I used to always say, you can’t make it you you can’t go you have no soul if all it is is about 70% off. Right? Yeah.

Scott Cowan [00:49:20]:
Mhmm.

Howard Behar [00:49:20]:
So why are you here? What are you here to do? And and, you know, I think these big the big chains, particularly in retail, have to fewer stores, but more creativity. You know?

Scott Cowan [00:49:32]:
Okay. Yeah. I remember growing up as a kid going in going in to say Frederick and Ellison in Downtown Seattle.

Howard Behar [00:49:38]:
Oh, wow. I need

Scott Cowan [00:49:39]:
Me too. Yeah. And and looking, you know, looking at the windows. Yeah. And the displays were amazing. Yeah. Yes. And now when I walk through the mall, I see what you’re saying and I also see a lot of 30% off closing soon or clearance.

Scott Cowan [00:49:55]:
This, this, you know, anyway.

Howard Behar [00:49:57]:
I’m gonna leave you. I’m sorry to interrupt.

Scott Cowan [00:50:00]:
No, no. We’ve run over our time. Again, thank you very much. I appreciate you, sharing what you’ve shared and I, am looking forward to the third one.

Howard Behar [00:50:11]:
I love your style. You’re a gentle soul.

Scott Cowan [00:50:17]:
Well, thank you for that. Yeah. You have a wonderful day.

Howard Behar [00:50:20]:
Okay. Take care, buddy. Okay. Take care.