Coffeehouse company: Starbucks

An international coffee and coffee house chain, Starbucks Corporation started as a single small store opened in 1971 and became a coffee giant at the end of the millennium. Starbucks was established in 1971 by three businessmen which are history teacher named Zev Siegl, a English teacher named Jerry Baldwin, and a writer named Gordon Bowker because they all have a same passion which is love to have a fresh tea and coffee.

Starbucks is at the top of the list of successful coffee companies, and as of November 2021, the company had 33,833 stores under the Starbucks brand in 80 countries. 15,444 of these were located in the United States.

From its humble beginnings as a Seattle-based coffee roaster, Starbucks has strived to create a "second home" for consumers, where they can stop on their way to and from work.

Starbucks has a network of company-operated and licensed stores. The company owns about 51% of its stores outright and licenses the remaining 49% to qualified partners. In Fiscal 2021, Beverage sales were $18.32 billion, whereas food products accounted for $5.05 billion. Its total revenue for that financial year was $29.1 billion, representing a 24% increase from 2020.

Starbucks ensure that every cup is ‘Brewed for those who love coffee’. Vanilla Latte, Iced White Chocolate Mocha, Chai Latte, etc., are the favourite picks of its customers. Starbucks has provided a wide range of drinks that includes many types of hot, cold coffee, hot and cold tea. Moreover, they also provided all types of snacks such as shortbread cookies and madeleines.

In recent years, the company has invested heavily in its brick-and-mortar locations by expanding its food options, remodeling its restaurants, and revamping its rewards programs.
Coffeehouse company: Starbucks

Vienna Coffeehouse

The first coffee house in Europe opened in Venice in 1647. The first coffee houses in England were opened in 1650 and 1652. And in Vienna the first coffee house opened only in 1683.

Vienna Coffee is the name of a popular traditional cream-based coffee beverage. It is made by preparing two shots of strong black espresso in a standard sized coffee cup and infusing the coffee with whipped cream (as a replacement for milk and sugar) until the cup is full.

Then the cream is twirled and optionally topped off with chocolate sprinklings. The cream actually is more than aesthetic as it allows the coffee flavour to be drawn through the cream, resulting in a fantastic, deliciously creamy coffee.

The first coffee house in Vienna was actually opened by the Armenian spy Diodato. He served at the Viennese Imperial court and was a man full of secrets. He knew about the dark beans and the art of preparing coffee from his home country.

The Viennese coffeehouse has always been a central meeting point for literates, musicians and artists. Therefore, the coffee house culture stands for atmosphere, freedom of mind and creative working, without being alone; at the same time it is strongly connected with indulgence and relaxation.

The Vienna Coffee House is a true stem cell for creating new ideas, concepts, poems, literature, political declarations, etc. It is an incubator within an ethnic and cultural melting pot.

In general, the Viennese, who mostly lived in tiny, crowded flats, regarded the elegant coffee houses as their "extended living rooms" or second homes where they could meet friends and other people. After World War One, the first dance cafés opened and played popular American jazz music.

Vienna Coffee

European history of coffee

The first reports of coffee reached Europe through a 1582 account of his travels by Leonhart Rauwolf, a doctor and botanist from Augsburg, in which he referred to coffee as being ‘as black as ink’. However, Alpinus (Prospero Alpini), in 1591 was the first who scientifically described it.

The Dutch were the first to introduce the plant into Europe.

In 1650, the first coffeehouse opened its doors in Oxford, England, its proprietor a Turkish Jew named Jacob. Coffee houses multiply and become such popular forums for learned and not so learned.

In the early 1640s, the first European coffeehouse opened for business in Venice, Italy.

In France, the first coffeehouse opened in 1671. It was set-up in Paris by an Armenian name Pascal, but meeting with little encouragement he removed to London. He was succeeded by other Armenian and Persians.

By 1843, there were thousands of coffeehouses throughout Europe and the American colonies.

Brazilian coffee industry gets started in 1727 from seedlings smuggled out from Paris.

From the mid-seventeenth century through the mid-eighteenth, home consumption of coffee in Europe was most common among the wealthier classes.

They could more easily afford the high price of coffee, which dropped only during the course of the eighteenth century.
European history of coffee

History of coffee in Arab world

Soon after discovery of coffee in Ethiopia in the sixteenth century, this staple became popular in nearby Mecca where Muslim pilgrims began to buy it and take it home, effectively creating a market for coffee throughout the Arab world.

While coffee was first considered a medicine or religious aid, it soon enough became an everyday habit. Wealthy people had a coffee room in their homes reserved only for ceremonial imbibing.

The Arabs were the first, not only to cultivate coffee but also to begin its trade. By 15th century, coffee was being cultivated commercially in the Yemeni district of Arabia and by the 16th it was known in Persia, Egypt, Syria and Turkey.

In 1453, Coffee was introduced to Constantinople by Ottoman Turks. The world’s first coffee shop, Kiva Han, open there in 1475.

Coffee shop or coffeehouses allowed people to get together for conversation, entertainment, and business, inspiring agreements, poetry and irreverence in equal measure.

With the expansion of the Arab-Muslim empires, commercial activity in each of these domains flourished.

In the middle of the 16th, the coffee was already drunk in Egypt, Syria, Persia and Turkey, and coffee shop were to be found in the cities of Medina, Cairo, Baghdad, Alexandria, Damask and Istanbul.

Despite efforts from the Arabs to control coffee cultivation – by prohibiting the export of unroasted beans and seedlings – in the early eighteenth century the Dutch started its cultivation in their Asian and South American colonies, as did the French in the Caribbean.
History of coffee in Arab world 

History of coffeehouses in Vienna, Austria

Coffeehouses have served as hangouts for artists and intellectuals throughout Europe whenever they existed.

Mohammed IV mobilized an army of 300,000 men and sent it forth under his vizier, Kara Mustapha, to destroy and conquer Europe.  Reaching Vienna July 7, 1683, the army quickly invested the city and cut it off from the world.

The enemy was repulsed in 12 September 1683, and legend has it that 500 sacks of coffee beans were left behind by the fleeing Turks.

Geor Franz Koltschitzky a native of Poland, also formerly an interpreter in the Turkish army, entered Austrian history by successfully passing through the Turkish line, in disguise, in Mid-August 1683 to deliver messages about conditions in Vienna to Charles V, Duke of Lorraine, who was heading up a relief army prepared to come to the city’s rescue.

He won himself undying fame with coffee his principle reward.

After the siege of 1683, Koltschitzky brewed and sold coffee at the house in the Domgasse, quite near St, Stephen’s Square.

At first the Viennese resisted wholesale consumption of the brew because of its bitterness, but when Koltschitzky discovered by chance that the addition of sugar made the taste more palatable, trade became brisk.

On January 17, 1685, Johannes Diodato obtained the first permit in Vienna to open a coffeehouse, although he probably had operated it earlier without benefit of the legal protection from competition that the license afforded.

He finally secured a royal monopoly from Leopold I on the sale of coffee in the city for twenty years.
History of coffeehouses in Vienna, Austria

History of coffee in Europe

European travelers and botanists discussed coffee in their travelogues and treatises long before it was consumed anywhere bin the West.

Because coffee was probably brought up through the port of Venice, many historians believe the first European coffeehouse was established in Venice in about 1645.

Shortly after coffee reached Rome, it was threatened with religious fanaticism. It is related that certain priests appealed to Pope Clement VIII (1535-1605) to have its use forbidden among Christians, denouncing it as an invention of Satan.

The first recorded British coffeehouse was in Oxford. It was opened in 1650. Students and faculty patronized Jacob of the Angel, where their admission and a cup of coffee cost a penny. By early 18th century London had thousands of coffeehouses and by 1739 they outnumbered taverns.

Coffee houses multiply and become such popular forums for learned and not so learned. Only a decade after 166o did coffee take off as an item of luxury consumption; coffeehouses and cafes, the very heart of the emerging public sphere, sprouted up in cities and provincial towns throughout Europe.

In France, the first coffeehouse opened in 1672. By 1843, there were thousands of coffeehouses throughout Europe and the American colonies.

Brazilian coffee industry gets started in 1727 from seedlings smuggled out from Paris.
History of coffee in Europe 

First coffeehouse in London

In 1652 a trader named Edward returned to England from the orient accompanied by a Greek by the name of Pasqua Rosee and he knows how to prepare coffee.

Edward and his father in law were exposed to the rich Turkish traditions surrounding coffee in Smyrna. They wanted to recreate some of the exotic experience upon returning to London. Since they were ‘too grand and busy’ to open a coffeehouse, they sponsored Rosee to rise to the occasion.

In the same year he founded London’s first coffee house in St. Michael’s Alley, Cornhill in front of the Church leading to the Royal Exchange, with the hope that the merchants who congregate at the exchange would be willing to try out a drink of coffee.

Pasqua produced the first coffee ad in English a prospectus in which he proclaimed ‘The Virtue of the Coffee Drink’. What has been described as ‘an integrated retail and business space’ was no more than a simple stall. It featured decorated shutters providing rudimentary shelter for the customers when opened and a sign an image of the owner dressed in Oriental fashion.

Coffee was roasted and brewed in the shed and sold over the counter. Pasqua using coffee beans imported from the city of Izmir in the Ottoman Empire.

In 1657, the first coffee newspaper advertisement appeared, in the London based paper The Public Adviser, and that Pasqua dressed like a Turk. The sign of the turbaned head became a common symbol of the early coffeehouse.

Many followed Pasqua step, by 1739 there were 551 coffeehouses in London. By 1700, there were 2000 coffeehouse in London.
First coffeehouse in London