When I first discovered in the early 1980s the Italian espresso bars in my trip to Italy, the vision was to re-create that for America - a third place that had not existed before. Starbucks re-created that in America in our own image; a place to go other than home or work. We also created an industry that did not exist: specialty coffee.

While we are a coffee company at heart, Starbucks provides much more than the best cup of coffee—we offer a community gathering place where people come together to connect and discover new things.

Most business people today are not going to invest in the uncertainty that exists in America.

If you want to achieve widespread impact and lasting value, be bold.

My kids probably started drinking coffee in their late teens.

We have no patent on anything we do and anything we do can be copied by anyone else. But you can't copy the heart and the soul and the conscience of the company.

The growth of the company and the license that Starbucks has is to participate in other food and beverage opportunities. We have a global business... and in many parts of the world, tea is much, much bigger than coffee, and we're going to bring tea and bring our capability and our understanding of what we've done for coffee to tea.