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There is hardly a place in New York that you can't walk a block and a half and get a cup of coffee. Believe me, I've been all over the world. There's no place like that but New York City.

Starbucks was founded around the experience and the environment of their stores. Starbucks was about a space with comfortable chairs, lots of power outlets, tables and desks at which we could work and the option to spend as much time in their stores as we wanted without any pressure to buy. The coffee was incidental.

Instant, soluble coffee has long been the unspeakable wasteland of the coffee business. Conventional wisdom would be that no premium brand should go near it. But Howard Schultz's vision from day one has been to bring quality coffee to the mass market.

Starbucks has a role and a meaningful relationship with people that is not only about the coffee.

One of the things that's great about New York is that it is not a one-industry town. It has education, academia, the service industry, arts, publishing, theater, politics, fashion, finance, as well as movie-making.

You can't have a decent food culture without a decent coffee culture: the two things grow up together.

Starbucks goes to a great effort, and pays twice as much for its coffee as its competitors do, and is very careful to help coffee producers in developing countries grow coffee without pesticides and in ways that preserve forest structure.

I never played coffee shops; I just played a lot of coffee shop-sized venues. I took every venue I could get my hands on.

One good and bad thing about New York is there's so much exciting stuff and so many people doing something interesting. I actually find in New York that you become more careerist and more focused on what's the newest, hippest thing.

It's fascinating to see how versatile New York City is. It lends itself to being so many different places!