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Jerry Baldwin Bio, Founder of Starbucks

One of the co-founders of Starbucks, Jerry Baldwin started out at Alfred Peet's coffee shop Peet's Coffee & Tea. Peet had started his store in Berkeley, California, pioneering the specialty coffee market. All three Starbucks founders were associates of Peet's, and bought their green coffee beans from a Seattle Peet's location in their first year of operation. Baldwin was an English teacher originally -- co-founders Zev Siegel and Gordon Bowker were a history teacher and writer, respectively.

The first Starbucks location was on Western Avenue in Seattle from 1971-1976 before relocating to Pike Place, where it remains in operation. Like Peet's, the store originally focused more on the sale of beans and equipment than on selling prepared coffee; after that first year, they bought their beans direct from farmers before roasting them. The company remained small and regional for years; there was not much of a specialty coffee market nationwide. When Howard Schultz joined the company in 1982, he was convinced there was bigger money to be made in selling coffee drinks, not coffee beans; when the owners disagreed, he opened his own chain of coffee bars, Il Giornale, in 1985 ... and was successful enough to buy the Starbucks chain two years later, using the Starbucks name but the coffee bar concept.

In 1984, Baldwin and the other original Starbucks owners had purchased Peet's Coffee & Tea, and continued to run it after selling Starbucks. Baldwin served as chairman until 2001, and is now the director of the board.

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