Starbucks represents something beyond a cup of coffee.

I do think - as self-serving as it sounds - that I was the right person, given the very, very strong headwind we had from the economy and our own issues, to come back and rewrite the future of the company.

The Starbucks customer and the Teavana customer are two very different customers, two different need states that are highly complimentary.

Any business today that embraces the status quo as an operating principle is going to be on a death march.

I was born on the other side of the tracks, in public housing in Brooklyn, New York. My dad never made more than $20,000 a year, and I grew up in a family that lost health insurance. So I was scarred at a young age with understanding what it was like to watch my parents lose access to the American dream.

Be bold, but be fair. Don't give in. If others around you have integrity, too, you can prevail

In the 1960s, if you introduced a new product to America, 90% of the people who viewed it for the first time believed in the corporate promise. Then 40 years later if you performed the same exercise, less than 10% of the public believed it was true. The fracturing of trust is based on the fact that the consumer has been let down.