Starbucks is the world's largest coffeehouse chain, founded in 1971 in Seattle and now operating tens of thousands of stores across dozens of countries. It started as a single shop selling roasted beans and equipment, then grew into the cafe brand that arguably taught much of the planet to order a latte. This guide tells the Starbucks story: where it came from, who built it, the drinks that made it famous, and why the green siren is one of the most recognised logos on Earth.
What is Starbucks?
Starbucks is an American coffee company and coffeehouse chain. It roasts and sells coffee, runs sit-in cafes, and sells packaged beans, ground coffee and ready-to-drink bottled drinks through grocery stores. The Starbucks company is headquartered in Seattle, Washington, in the United States, and trades publicly under the ticker SBUX.
For most people, though, Starbucks simply means the cafe on the corner: espresso drinks, blended Frappuccinos, seasonal lattes, and a paper cup with a green mermaid on the side. The brand has become shorthand for a certain kind of coffee experience, copied and adapted by chains everywhere.
The origin story: Seattle, 1971
Starbucks was founded in 1971 by three partners: English teacher Jerry Baldwin, history teacher Zev Siegl, and writer Gordon Bowker. The first store opened at Seattle's Pike Place Market. Crucially, the original Starbucks did not sell brewed coffee to go. It was a retailer of high-quality whole roasted beans, loose tea, spices and home brewing equipment.
The name came from Starbuck, the first mate in Herman Melville's novel Moby-Dick — a nod to the seafaring coffee traders of old. That nautical theme also gave the company its logo: a twin-tailed siren, or mermaid, drawn from old Norse woodcuts. The siren has been redrawn several times since, growing simpler and greener, but she has anchored the brand for more than fifty years.
Howard Schultz and the Italian inspiration
The turning point came in 1982, when Howard Schultz joined as director of marketing. On a buying trip to Milan in 1983, Schultz was struck by Italy's espresso bars — the ritual, the social hum, the barista as a fixture of daily life. He wanted to bring that cafe culture back to the United States.
The original founders were focused on selling beans, not running espresso bars, so Schultz left and started his own coffeehouse company, Il Giornale. In 1987 he bought Starbucks from its founders, merged it with Il Giornale, and kept the Starbucks name and siren. That is the moment the modern, cafe-first Starbucks was born.
How Starbucks became a global giant
From a handful of Seattle stores, Starbucks expanded aggressively through the 1990s, going public in 1992 and opening its first locations outside North America later that decade. The pace rarely let up. Today the Starbucks company operates around 41,000 stores across roughly 90 markets, on every continent except Antarctica.
Its two largest markets by a wide margin are the United States and China, followed by Japan and South Korea, then Canada and the United Kingdom. That scale makes Starbucks a useful reference point when you compare it with other big coffee chains.
| Chain | Founded / origin | Known for |
|---|---|---|
| Starbucks | 1971, Seattle, USA | Espresso drinks, Frappuccinos, the "third place" cafe |
| Costa Coffee | 1971, London, UK | British high-street coffee, now owned by Coca-Cola |
| Tim Hortons | 1964, Canada | Double-double, Timbits, Canadian institution |
| Dunkin' | 1950, Massachusetts, USA | Coffee and doughnuts, fast service |
| Dutch Bros | 1992, Oregon, USA | Drive-thru coffee, energy drinks, upbeat service |
You can read the full histories of the others in our Costa Coffee brand guide, Tim Hortons guide and Dutch Bros brand guide.
The "third place" idea
Part of what set Starbucks apart was a deliberate philosophy. Schultz often described the goal of building a "third place" — a comfortable spot between home and work where people could linger, meet, or simply sit with a coffee. Soft seating, free refills of brewed coffee in some markets, accessible restrooms, and later, reliable Wi-Fi all served that idea. Whether or not every store lives up to it, the concept shaped how modern cafes are designed.
Signature Starbucks drinks
Starbucks did not invent espresso, but it popularised a particular menu of customisable milk-and-espresso drinks for a mass audience. A few have become cultural icons in their own right. For a tour of the most popular orders, see our guide to the best Starbucks drinks to order.
The Frappuccino
The Frappuccino is Starbucks' line of blended iced coffee and crème drinks — coffee or flavour base, milk, ice and often whipped cream, whizzed smooth. Interestingly, Starbucks did not create the name. The Frappuccino was developed by The Coffee Connection, a Boston-area chain, and Starbucks acquired the rights when it bought that company in 1994. Starbucks reworked the recipe and launched its own version in 1995, and it became a runaway hit, spawning a whole bottled ready-to-drink range.
The Pumpkin Spice Latte
Launched in 2003, the Pumpkin Spice Latte — universally shortened to "PSL" — is Starbucks' most famous seasonal drink. It pairs espresso and steamed milk with a pumpkin-and-warm-spice flavour, whipped cream and a spice topping. Its autumn return has become an annual event that signals the start of fall for a lot of people, and countless other brands now chase the same pumpkin-spice season.
The everyday menu
Beyond the headline drinks, the core Starbucks menu is built on the standard espresso family: the latte, cappuccino, flat white, macchiato, mocha, americano and cold brew, each available hot or iced and endlessly customisable for milk, syrup and shots. If you want to understand what is actually in each cup, our guide to types of coffee drinks breaks the whole menu down, and the cappuccino explainer covers the espresso-and-milk basics.
| Drink | What it is | Hot or iced |
|---|---|---|
| Latte | Espresso with lots of steamed milk, thin foam | Both |
| Cappuccino | Espresso with steamed milk and a thick foam cap | Usually hot |
| Americano | Espresso diluted with hot water | Both |
| Frappuccino | Blended iced coffee or crème drink | Iced (blended) |
| Pumpkin Spice Latte | Seasonal spiced latte | Both |
The siren logo
The Starbucks logo is a green, twin-tailed siren in a circle. The first 1971 version was brown and far more detailed, showing a bare-chested mermaid surrounded by the words "Starbucks Coffee Tea Spices." Over the decades the design was simplified and recoloured to its now-famous green, the face was centred and softened, and in 2011 the surrounding text was dropped entirely. The siren alone now does the work — a sign of how recognisable the brand has become.
Starbucks coffee at home
Starbucks is not only cafes. The Starbucks coffee you buy as packaged beans, ground coffee, instant (VIA), or capsules for pod machines is a big part of the business. Roasts run from the lighter Blonde range to the darker, smokier signature blends the brand is known for. If you brew at home, the same fundamentals apply as with any coffee: the right grind for your method and fresh beans matter more than the label. See our guides on grinding coffee at home and ground coffee vs beans vs powder.
Pricing for Starbucks drinks and packaged coffee varies a lot by country, retailer and store format, so it is best thought of in relative terms: Starbucks generally sits in the premium tier of high-street coffee rather than the budget end.
Why Starbucks matters
Whatever you think of the coffee, Starbucks reshaped the cafe industry. It made specialty espresso drinks mainstream, normalised the customisable, name-on-the-cup ordering style, and exported a recognisable cafe format to almost every country it entered. Rivals and independents alike define themselves partly against it. That influence, more than any single drink, is the real Starbucks story.
If brand histories are your thing, keep exploring with our other coffee-chain guides — the British story in the Costa Coffee guide and the American drive-thru world in the Dunkin' guide — or head to the coffee hub to dig into the drinks themselves.