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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.

We live in a multi-cultural society far more open to international ideas. If you'd told me 20 years ago I'd drive through Bury and see someone sitting outside a cafe drinking a latte, I'd have laughed. In fact, I wouldn't have even known what a latte was.

Listen, I didn't know how to make coffee when I came to the United States. Because in Colombia the maids do it.

Before I started Coffee of Grace, I assumed all coffee came from Latin America or Indonesia. I wasn't familiar with African coffee.

Coffee in England is just toasted milk.

Before it became a ubiquitous part of urban life, Starbucks was, in most American cities, a radically new idea.

My dad came from Cuba when he was a teenager not speaking English. And I grew up here speaking Spanglish. That's the world in which I grew up, and that's a world in which a lot of second generation immigrants find themselves.

I've always wanted to be able to say that I come from Los Angeles, California and feel quintessentially American - even if I said that in Spanish.

At the time, there were very few foreign names in the press and they were all factory workers. I thought I'd never get a job at a university with a foreign name.