Surprising Starbucks Details We Knew Nothing About

Ever since its foundation in 1971, Starbucks has grown from a modest Seattle coffee shop to a corporate giant whose defining features are recognizable to people from every corner of the Earth. What may seem like a simple staple, however, is actually a fascinatingly complex organization with a dramatic history and an array of bizarre little details that many people are totally unaware of. We have three people to thank for bringing Starbucks into the world. The first is a college dropout from Seattle, named Gordon Bowker, who had discovered his love of coffee on a trip to Italy.  The other two were his roommates, Jerry Baldwin and Zev Siegl; they began roasting their coffee together and started their company named Starbucks.

Starbucks’ name has a surprising origin that you’d never guess from its logo. Their name might have seemed a little peculiar — and that’s because it comes from a particular book. The name Starbucks comes from “Moby Dick,” the renowned novel by Herman Melville. Starbuck was the name of the first mate of Captain Ahab’s ship, the Pequod, and he allows for a calmer contrast to the obsessive nature of the Captain. Starbucks, however, was a second-choice name for the company. Gordon Bowker had wanted to call the company Pequod, but Terry Heckler was skeptical. The two eventually settled on Starbucks as a name, and it was for the best.

Starbucks’ round tables exist at pretty much every location the company owns. Although they may not exactly evoke the warm, inviting comfort of smaller, living-room coffee shops, they’re built that way for an excellent reason. Their round tables are used to make you feel less lonely and more at home as rounded corners are more welcoming than those with square edges, and people look less alone while seated at a round table. It just goes to show that details of stores like Starbucks have been thought through over and over again.

If there’s one thing we know about Starbucks, it’s that they’re literally everywhere. The chain is found across the world in 63 countries, with Seoul having the most Starbucks, followed closely by New York, Shanghai, London, and Chicago. The world-famous coffeehouse chain, Starbucks, accounted for 31,256 stores globally in 2019.