Thanks for the history lesson :): I'm not generally a Starbucks coffee drinker, thinking their coffee is too strong & burnt tasting. and I'm not a coffee aficionado. This new Pike Place Roast is very palatable to me, and I'm glad to see it. It's much smoother than the other Starbucks flavors.

I visited their Web site, and was also able to view a really cool Virtual Tour of the Pike Place store itself -- I never knew how much history there was (thanks to your article, too)! I found the tour at:

http://www.starbucks.com/flash/pikeplaceroast/

Starbuck's First Tokyo Store: I used to cover Starbucks, and Seattle's other coffee companies, for the Puget Sound Business Journal, back in the days when Seattle HAD more than one coffee company.

Now, of course, it's pretty much all Starbucks.

Here's the story I wrote about the first Starbucks in Tokyo:

Starbucks takes its shot in Japan

Starbucks has done really well there, and the locals now call it Staa-Baa.

Jeanne

The Assertive Cancer Patient
www.assertivepatient.com

News to me!!!: Good grief! I've been telling people the wrong thing all these years!! I grew up in Central Washington - yes, you Seattle-centrics, there is such a place, usually dubbed "Eastern" over here - and prior to reading this story believed the current Pike Place location was the "original" location. Great article with lots of perspective. Plus, it coincided with my visit to the store next to my office this morning, where I purchased a Pike Place Blend-based redeye and noted the logo change on the cup sleeve. Back to roots!

Before Starbucks: Thanks for the great history. Before Starbucks I remember driving to Vancouver BC, to Murchies to buy green coffee beans, roasting them on a cookie sheet, grinding them in an old food mill and filtering the coffee through a a paper towel. We were desperate. You could get a great cup of coffee after dinner at the Brasserie Pittsburgh though.

MAW

nice story, pleasantly written: aside staa baa as the japs call it, there seem to have been a few other things brewing in the city of chief sealth that did not turn out well or were that well grounded. this couldn't be the time that mossback and other nostalgikers hereabouts wax so fondly about could it with 15 % unemployment and the lights about to go out? meself, i'm an Allegro aficionado, but don't mind starbuck at all or the entire coffee culture no matter that the rubes hereabout need more than coffee to waken them from their infinite doltishness.

No other Coffee in Seattle?!: "Now, of course, it's pretty much all Starbucks."

Have you walked around Seattle lately? What about Cafe Vita (Used by Vita and All City), Tony's (used by Cafe Ladro) , Fonte (used by Uptown), Tully's, and my personal favorite Victrola. In fact, of the hundreds of Coffee Shops that line the streets of Seattle's neighborhoods, I can't think of a single one that uses Starbucks coffee, except of course, Starbucks.

Also, Cafe Allegro is simply an espresso and coffee house, they don't do any roasting. They use Brown's Coffee (another NOT Starbucks).

And then there is Illy Caffè from Trieste, "the one that started it all." Had Gordon Bowker not become enamored of Italy's coffee culture, fueled by roasters such as Illy, there would have been no reason to start a coffee shop in the first place.

Worth mentioning, as well, that berkeleydude1 revives the canard that Starbucks is "burned." Well, yes, of course it is; roasting is a form of burning and coffee roasting (in French and in Italian) is just that: "burning." (You want coffee that's milder, don't get the Full City Roast.) Thank goodness for coffee that has real flavor!

Next you'll tell us that Howard Shultz never owned the Supersonics!

What an excellent read! This is what I expect from Crosscut. A well written story, rich with features, full bodied detail. The rest of you navel dwellers don't get it. Its not about the coffee.
sheesh!

I think these are the same guys that started Redhook brewery, which I think was the first microbrewery around here..

Here's a reminiscence by one of the first Starbucks baristas, Michael Dougan (who chose to be nameless but now is comfortably out about his coffeebean past): http://www.cityartsonline.com/issues/seattle/2010/07/bc-coffee

Yeah. The first one was next door to the liquor store in the market. It was very convienient.

Thanks much for this. I worked for the Seattle Symphony on contract in 1972-73 helping organize their on-air auction with KING-FM, and Zev was an ardent supporter (well, look where his father worked), and I have fond memories of that first store, and Zev. Great times in Seattle.

I used to go in there and shoot the breeze with Zev all the time. Those guys had to sell themselves in addition to the coffee. Look at the job they did!

Re the illustration: I read in the PI a few days after doing the drawing that the fellow crossing the street in front of Starbucks, wearing the baseball cap and using a cane and crutch, shot someone a few minutes later. He was a well known figure in the Market.

Also back in those early days, there were coffee co-ops, where a group of friends/neighbours could order bulk Starbucks-roasted beans: that wholesale side was called Caravelli and the roasting/pick-up place was on the corner of where the Harley store now is (First at Harbor Steps)...just up the street from Mr. D's, the best Greek place in town!

Stash Teas, Starbucks, all products of the very early 70's. I loved those days.

Hmmm. I still don't get the whole Seattle coffee thing. Seattle's a beer town. The coffee thing just seems so... uh... California.

Good story.
The Allegro was one of Starbuck's first commercial customers, and they used it in their coffee for many years until after the founder sold the place and went to work for Starbucks as the person with the vision and plan to change their outlets from beans and implements outlets to the coffee shops they are today. He modeled the template on the Allegro and for years would bring Starbucks trainees and visitors around to the Allegro to see "the mothership" as he called it. Not that he really did that, the grit was washed away in the process but that was his method. There's a book waiting to be written on this subject, you'd think with all the writers in coffeeshops in this town it would have happened already.

Oops, meant to include his name. Dave Olsen opened the Allegro in a former mortuary after having been charmed by the coffeeshops he visited in Italy while on a bike tour. He learned about the trade in San Francisco afterwards. For years the Allegro used Italian terminology instead of the French, Au Lait instead of the Latte, but they finally gave way. A shame, that.

Late 1970s, as a newcomer here from the south ... I bought Starbuck's at U Village and compared it favorably to a local small roaster in Chapel Hill that I'd liked. Clearly, the cool coffee boutique that was A Southern Season didn't have the business savvy behind it that Sbux did ... !!

As long as we're going to give shout-outs to coffee roasters, please, please, let us sing the praises of Caffe D'Arte ... probably the smoothest, sweetest roast on the planet. Mauro is an artist with a bean.

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When I originally wrote this, Chaussures Converse I was mistaken about the sequence of events.

" pleasantly written: aside staa baa as the japs call it.."

japs?!

Really. How stupid.

If I remember correctly, if you bought a pound of coffee they gave you a free cup of drip coffee - all they had at the time. Also, though my memory is hazy on this, I think that after they roasted coffee, if it didn't sell within some relatively short period of time it was donated to one of the food banks. They really prided themselves on the freshness of their coffee.