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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.

I think Starbucks created a platform and, ultimately, a runway for many other companies to emulate. I suspect if we had not achieved what we have, there would have been many regional brands that would have succeeded. But I'm not sure there would have been a national brand of the scope of Starbucks.

When I first discovered in the early 1980s the Italian espresso bars in my trip to Italy, the vision was to re-create that for America - a third place that had not existed before. Starbucks re-created that in America in our own image; a place to go other than home or work. We also created an industry that did not exist: specialty coffee.

People around the world, they want the authentic Starbucks experience.

The Starbucks brand has shifted over time from being a specialty brand to being more of a mass brand. There is a gap at the top of the market.

Starbucks represents something beyond a cup of coffee.

When we began Starbucks, what I wanted to try to do was to create a set of values, guiding principles, and culture.

Post-9/11, we saw an immediate uptick in the amount of people in our stores, all over the country. People wanted that human connection. We are not going to fracture the Starbucks experience.

We think of Starbucks not as a coffee company but a media company.

We need to reinvent food at Starbucks. Less could be more.