Howard Schultz (b. 1953) is a businessman who has been CEO of Starbucks multiple times, including during the company’s explosive growth in the late 1980s and 1990s. He joined the company in 1982 as director of marketing and retail operations, then purchased the company in 1987 and became its CEO. At that time, Starbucks had only 11 locations. By 2000, when Schultz stepped down as CEO for the first time, it had about 2,500 locations in 12 countries. Schultz returned as CEO from 2008 to 2017, and again from 2022 to 2023 as Starbucks attempted to thwart unionization drives at many of their stores in the US.

Here, Howard Schultz poses with a cup of Starbucks coffee. In 1993, when the photo was taken, Starbucks was rapidly expanding – it opened more than 100 stores that year and was planning to open 125 more stores in 1994, including moving into Schultz’s hometown, New York City. A New Yorker quoted in the Post-Intelligencer article for which this photo was taken said, “New Yorkers don’t want to sit around and read a book. They just want to get their coffee and get the hell out of there,” but Schultz was optimistic about Starbucks’ future in the city.

Caption information source: "Big Apple - Ripe for the Pickin'", by Imbert Mathee, Seattle Post-Intelligencer, October 8, 1993, pp. E1, E4
Caption information source: “Howard Schultz,” by Christopher O’Leary, Britannica, retrieved from https://www.britannica.com/biography/Howard-Schultz.