To be an enduring, great company, you have to build a mechanism for preventing or solving problems that will long outlast any one individual leader.

We can't wait for Washington. Business leaders are going to have to galvanize their own constituencies and do everything they can to demonstrate confidence in the economy, and I think that can be contagious.

I think Starbucks created a platform and, ultimately, a runway for many other companies to emulate. I suspect if we had not achieved what we have, there would have been many regional brands that would have succeeded. But I'm not sure there would have been a national brand of the scope of Starbucks.

I'm optimistic about the country; I'm optimistic about the American people.

On balance, I am a supporter of the minimum wage going up. We've got to be very careful what we wish for because some employers - and there could be a lot of them - will be scared away from hiring new people or creating incremental hours for part-time people as a result of that wage going up.

We think of Starbucks not as a coffee company but a media company.

I never took classic business classes in college, so I don't have the background that any of the people running large companies have.