Howard Schultz, part owner, the former CEO of Starbucks, and now the global strategist says that he believes Starbucks is only in the "infant stage" in terms of growth, with an amazing 7500 stores world wide and an average loyal customer visiting the store 18 times a month. This statement may seem hard to believe, but Howard Schultz has turned Starbucks into a high performance organization (HPO), doing what was right for his employees and customers. Schultz grew up in public housing in Brooklyn NY. His father worked for minimum wage and had no health benefits. His father was hurt on the job, and there was no way for their family to have income. Schultz took this into consideration when growing Starbucks into what it is today. He wanted a company that his father never got a chance to work for. Starbucks offers health insurance to employees working over twenty hours a week, and offers employee stock options. All of this unheard of for a retail company going public in 1992.
             The Starbucks model encompasses all of the attributes of a HPO; they have employee involvement in terms of their employees interacting with customers in a small and somewhat intimate atmosphere. Their employees are mostly young people, people who can't usually afford health care. Starbucks has lower turnover, and higher employee loyalty because of their involvement. Starbucks has self directing work teams. Each store is run exactly the same whether it is in Charleston, Prague or Sydney. The only difference is localized food in different countries. All the recipes for coffee and beans are roasted the same way internationally. In addition to having American music playing and American drink names. Starbucks has integrated production technology. They do not have overstock of coffee or supplies sitting on hand collecting dust at their locations. They practice "just in time supply" keeping overhead costs of storing the beans down. Also starbucks.c...