Saturday, March 10, 2012

I Love Starbucks! Lessons Learned from Starbucks Headquarters




It's been a while since my last post but I have been travelling for work with little time to sleep let alone write. For my work, I travelled to Starbucks Support Center (aka Headquarters) in Seattle. Here's a little entry about my experience.



A little caveat here, I LOVE STARBUCKS! Surprisingly, I'm not even a coffee drinker; I'm a tea drinker. So you may ask why do you LOVE Starbucks? Before, this week I really wouldn't have been able to answer the question but after visiting the Support Center, I realized it's because of the sense of community and belonging I feel when I walk into a store. The same sense of belonging and community is within the headquarters.

Here are some lessons learned from being at Headquarters
  1. Respect- creating community is challenging and I realized that why I love Starbucks because they foster community through respect of people, environment, time, and place. Everyone was so nice. At the headquarters everyone took so much care for each other, recycling bins clearly labeled were everywhere, almost everyone was gone at 5pm, people took pride in making sure their spaces and personal places were clear.
  2. Aroma and fragrance is everything.Walking into the building and it smells like freshly roasted coffee is so intoxicating. Imagine working in a Starbucks commercial...where the best part of working is the smell of Starbucks in the air.
  3. Ambience is key. Set the mood for work and at Starbucks that includes collaborative work spaces set up like coffee shops and living rooms. Also imagine walking through the halls of your office hearing cafe music playing all day.
I plan to take these lessons and apply them to my own work space. Maybe my attitude will be more pleasant and productivity will increase; it's worth a shot.

Original Starbucks Logo



No comments:

Post a Comment