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.

In life, you can blame a lot of people and you can wallow in self-pity or you can pick yourself up and say listen, I have to be responsible for myself.

The premium single-cup segment is the fastest-growing business within the global coffee industry.

I honestly never dreamed at the time that I would one day own the Starbucks and or be in a position where we would have more than 10,000 stores around the world. It has just been an incredible journey for all of us.

When you start a company, it's a singular focus. You have the wind at your back.

This may sound a bit naive, but I got here by believing in big dreams.

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.