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Zev Siegel Bio, Founder of Starbucks

History teacher Zev Siegel was one of the original founders of Starbucks, a chain of coffee bean and equipment stores based in Seattle and inspired by Alfred Peet's chain of coffee specialty stores, Peet's Coffee & Tea. All three founders knew or had worked for Peet, and in their first year of operation (1971), they purchased their green unroasted coffee beans from him; after that they bought direct from the farmers.

The chain remained regional, and the owners were interested principally in selling equipment and supplies for home coffee making. When employee Howard Schultz tried to persuade them that there was a bigger market in selling prepared coffee and espresso drinks, they brushed him off; he opened his own chain of Italian-style coffee bars, Il Giornale, in 1985, a year after Starbucks had purchased Peet's. Two years later, Il Giornale was doing well enough for Schultz to buy out Starbucks. The original owners continued to own and operate Peet's, continuing their intent of dealing in coffee supplies; the Il Giornale coffee bars were rebranded with the Starbucks name but Schultz's concepts, and went on to become one of the most successful franchise operations of the 1990s and 21st century.

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