Howard Schultz

In 1982, Schultz married Sheri Kersch, an interior designer, whom he had met four years before. They have two children: son, Eliahu Jordan and daughter, Addison.

His son Eliahu Jordan Schultz is a sportswriter for the Huffington Post.

He married Breanna Lind Hawes in 2011.

Howard Schultz was born on July 19, 1953 to Fred Schultz, ex-US Army trooper and later truck driver, and Elaine. He grew up with his siblings in the Canarsie Bayview Houses of the New York City Housing Authority.

His family was poor, and his only relief was sports. He went to Canarsie High School, where he excelled at sports. He was awarded an athletics scholarship to Northern Michigan University.

He became the first person in his family to go to college. He was a member of Tau Kappa Epsilon, and received his bachelor’s degree in Communications in 1975.

Schultz graduated, and became a salesperson for Xerox Corporation, and was soon promoted as sales representative. He became general manager for the US operations of Swedish drip coffee maker manufacturer, Hammarplast, in 1979.

In 1981, he visited Seattle-based coffee-bean shop called Starbucks Coffee Company, a client of Hammerplast, curious to know why they ordered so many plastic cone filters, and was impressed by their knowledge of coffee.

In 1982, he joined Starbucks as the Director of Marketing. While on an official trip to Milan, Italy, he noticed that every street had coffee bars that served as meeting places apart from espresso.

On his return, he persuaded the owners of Starbucks to launch a pilot café project of serving espresso beverages in addition to the whole bean coffee, leaf teas and spices. The project was successful.

The Starbucks owners did not want to get into the restaurant business. Schultz left Starbucks in 1985 to start business on his own. He needed $400,000. Jerry Baldwin and Gordon Bowker offered to help.

Schultz opened his first store ‘IlGiornale’ in 1986. Two years later, Starbucks’ management decided to focus on Peet’s Coffee & Tea and sold its Starbucks retail unit to Schultz for $3.8 million.

He renamed Il Giornale as Starbucks, and aggressively expanded it across the US. He did not want to franchise the outlets, and retained its ownership.