Starbucks: One Meeting at a Time!

April 29th, 2009 → 5:26 pm @

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Starbucks: One Meeting at a Time!

Like what the subtitle of Howard Schultz’s book says, “One cup at a time,” I strongly recommend going to Starbucks for the start of something great in your career, business and the things you do great!

Why on earth would I say that Starbucks is a great place to do your work? Let me sum it up in one long and bold sentence:

“It offers one of the best coffee in the world plus I just love the ambiance of the hissing of its large coffee maker, the resonance of its blenders that creates their famous Frappuccino drink, the jingle of the scoops of ice that make their iced lattes and mocha drinks, the holler of its baristas to whose drink is currently being served at the bar, the chatter of banter and sweet conversations, the slight turning of the page by solitary readers of books, magazines and newspapers, and the keyboard clicks of nonchalant writers and workaholics (like myself) at the surrounding tables.”

Obviously, it’s not just the coffee; the sensation of being in its café adds value to working in a Starbucks coffee shop.

Starbucks is probably the best place to set up your first business meeting that will never hurt your cash pockets. I mean, why spend a ridiculously high sum of money over lunch or dinner for a deal that you have no idea where it’s headed? At the end of the day, it’s all about matching what you offer and what your counterpart is looking for. No matter how expensive, extravagant and image-building the meal is, if your business endeavors do not complement each other, it will never work out. “The meal doesn’t make the deal.” So, the best place to cold-call and start the business relationship in an appeasing atmosphere that allows both you and your new acquaintance to relax while shop-talking is still a Starbucks coffee shop.

Recently, I had the chance to call on bloggers to invite them to write for an upcoming travel portal to the Philippines that I’m involved with. Though the site is (frustratingly) not yet online, I’ve managed to get quite a number of good bloggers on the fold while getting introduced to a new, growing segment of the publishing industry that I never cared to bother myself to know more about. I met most of my prospective writers and photo-journalists in a Starbucks coffee shop, a lot of these done at café along Legaspi corner Rufino streets in Legaspi Village, Makati City. My intent for meeting each one of these budding writers and photographers is to describe the travel portal project in detail, something that my literary abilities cannot correctly express. The relaxed aura of meeting at Starbucks proved to be successful, and many signed up to be part of the project.

So, one might ask where this excessive penchant for Starbucks began. As my agile mind can recall, it started in November of 1994 when I had my first taste of a cup of brewed “to go” Starbucks coffee in Sydney, Australia, right before boarding a boat that would take us to the famous Opera House. The trip to Australia was one of my marital travel adventures – my wife, Carina, and I had a penchant for traveling as much as we can before we decided to have kids – six vacation trips in a span of just a year which brought agitated responses from my then Avon boss, Connie Arboleda (who also became my firstborn’s godmother). I heard of Starbucks only from books and magazines. “Hmm. Not bad” was my smiling response. But that was it. It took a year before I had a chance to go to Vancouver, British Columbia in Canada for the first time when my wife gave birth to our first born, Cara Isabelle. In my three weeks there, I probably drank 3 cups per week, usually the brewed kind, and without my wife knowing that I was slipping in and out of her aunt’s house where we lived. The nearest Starbucks café was a five minute walk along Granville Avenue in the Marpole district of Vancouver, BC, which was also right in front of a Safeway store. It was actually the latter which I used as my alibi to buy nonessential things just to skip out of the house and buy my cup of Starbucks coffee.

When I came back to the Philippines, I actually mailed a proposal letter to Starbucks in Seattle, Washington where I offered to get a franchise for a Philippine store. In those days, e-mail was nonexistent and “Voice over IP” was unknown. I never got a response from them.

In 1997, Starbucks opened its first Philippine store at the 6750 Building along Ayala Avenue in Makati City. It was a partnership with Rustan’s Corporation, a well-known family who has been a business mainstay of department stores, supermarkets and restaurants in the country. I thought they got a franchise from Starbucks Coffee Company, something I attempted to do. A few years later, I read the very first published book by CEO Howard Schultz of his wonderful story of Starbucks and learned that the coffee company does not franchise – it partners with experienced restaurant companies on the basis of its standard partnership demand to create hundreds of branches on an annual basis.

The years went on in my corporate life and I sipped the famous coffee mainly for pleasure. Then, it became an evening ritual and for good reason. At the end of a tiring day in the office, my wife and kids would always demand quality time from me until they all zonked out on bed. Having all these corporate issues and debacles in my head while being with my family was a tough thing to handle. Don’t get me wrong. I love my wife and kids very much but the transition wrought my mind with distraught. I started straying to Starbucks for a moment’s time of peace while trying to readjust before driving back home and welcoming my family with high energy and smiles. I would spend half-an-hour or so sipping my hot, grande, non-fat, one equal latte while simmering the humid air outside (I smoked a lot before) and observing the people around me. Sometimes, I would read a magazine or today’s newspaper that was always available inside the café. I realized that the entire routine was the best relaxing way to downplay my corporate role, adjust and move into my fatherly and spouse role. This went on forever.

I would also use Starbucks as my venue to meet friends, acquaintances, old schoolmates and former office colleagues. The ambiance gave a better venue for entertaining ourselves over our hot or cold drinks and the not-too-heavy offering of meals and pastries. My corporate meetings would also be set on its hallowed grounds and I would guess 50% of the time, something successful came out of my many meetings in a Starbucks café.

When I got a chance to work at an American call center in Guyana (South America), my trip would take me from Manila to a two hour stopover at Narita airport in Japan where I would savor a cup before a longer flight. I would arrive at LAX airport in Los Angeles, California, grab another cup of Starbucks coffee before hailing a Supershuttle van for my one hour trip to Fontana, CA, where my Mom lived. I would stay for 2 or 3 nights before going back to LAX to catch an afternoon flight to Guyana. The plane would take us to Northwest Airlines’ Detroit or Minneapolis St. Paul hub, usually for another two hour layover before going en route to Miami, Florida. The latter was the last leg of my domestic U.S. flights. My next ride was a British West Indies Airways plane (they commonly called it “Beewee”) which had a one hour stopover at Barbados before proceeding to Guyana. Okay, let me count the number of times I would buy a Starbucks cup – five cups in a grueling 36-hour flight from Manila to Guyana, not to mention the fact that I always brought at least 5 big bags of ground coffee because three months without Starbucks would be suicide. That’s why I always have my 2 nights in California. The round trip back to Manila would be the same and the number of cups of Starbucks coffee I sipped would still be the same. This went on for two years with a quarterly home leave for 2 weeks.

One Christmas season, I gave away those “Manila” labeled wide-bottom mugs to my CEO and the people who reported directly to me at the Guyana call center. I wondered why Sean Krivatch, my CEO boss, enthusiastically thanked me days later. I later learned that he and his wife loved the mug because it wouldn’t rock unbalanced on the bed mattress, and their “breakfast in bed” routine quickly added my mugs into their customary habit. “I never thought of it that way but, hey! You’re very much welcome for the mugs.”

After two years, I hastily left my work in Guyana to fly back to Manila because of family problems. Being away regardless of my quarterly visits was a strain on my relationship with my family despite the financial gains. I could call them once every other day and would use the online text messaging system chikka.com to send short messages to my wife’s mobile phone. My computer at our condominium unit along Roxas boulevard only used a dial-up internet connection and my wife was never interested in learning anything that had to do with computers. She was a dentist by profession and that was the extent of her technical knowledge in life.

Back in Manila, I roamed the city streets networking with people who would be interested in my North and South American call center connections while my I fixed my issues with my family. Again, the best place to set up a meeting was Starbucks. By this time, there were so many branches between the cities of Pasig, Makati, Manila and Muntinlupa, places where I had easy access to go to. There would be new encounters with entrepreneurs and corporate managers that may be interested in me or what I had to offer. Friends would drop by to offer their help in referrals. It was actually the best place to meet during this time of my life because it was always a “dutch treat” encounter between me and those I was meeting. If I had to pony-up the treat, it was just a cup of hot or cold coffee, not a big strain on my dwindling savings.

There had been many good and bad encounters for me while sipping my coffee in a Starbucks café. It was the place where my wife and I had a big argument (good thing we were outside). I had my only one-on-one talk with father-in-law out at the Alabang branch before my family and I went to Canada. Starbucks Greenbelt 3 was where I got Frank Lai of Montreal-based GoldTech Systems, Inc. to sign a joint venture partnership deal with Hans Dee of Mannasoft Technology Corporation with the intent to set up GoldTech in the Philippines. Though I was a 10% shareholder of the new company in paper, I reassigned my shares to Frank so he and Hans could equally own the company, fifty-fifty. It was also the place where I first met the heads of another Montreal-based company, Fred Cote and Shawn Privatsky. A year later, I got the contract to represent them in the Philippines. Their company is Proximo Systems, Inc. and the hosted call center solution I was to market and sell in the Philippines was called Kunnect. Though I met Kyujin Hwang, then a Vice-President of U.S. based telecommunications company Airnex Communications, Inc., in another place, I had good (business) relationship-building sessions with Kyu in many Starbucks branches. A most recent meeting in Starbucks was with the CEO of The Travel Outlet of Virginia, Inc., Roy Estaris. The Travel Outlet is a twenty-two year old travel agency company in the U.S. and, after I sent my 17-page business plan cum proposal, I got the contract to develop and manage the content of their upcoming travel portal business, Just Go Philippines (or aptly branded as “JustGo Philippines!”). When on his next trip to the Philippines he brought along his COO Naomi Fitzwilliams, whose birthday happened to be on the night they landed in Manila, my business partner Richard Sia and I bought her a Starbucks item as a birthday gift, a set of six espresso-sized cups each labeled with the different city names Starbucks had a branch in the Philippines.

Back while I was in Canada fixing my family problems, my wife and I joined the choir of the Canadian Martyrs Catholic Church. This was where I met Lennie Cristobal, the choir’s musical director and pianist, and we spent many evenings talking about the choir, musical pieces and life in general in a few of the Starbucks branches in Richmond, BC. During one evening coffee session, he got me to agree to start playing bass guitar pieces since two acoustic guitars playing with no consistency in strumming or plucking sounded awful. I could read musical notes so he gave me simple pieces at the start. I eventually translated his pieces into guitar tabs since I could read tabs faster than standard piano pieces.

On an over-the-border trip from Richmond, BC to Seattle, WA, Carina knew that one of my lifelong dreams was to visit the very first Starbucks coffee shop at Pikes Place and we did. When we were there, my kids, Cara and Aaron, looked at me with confused faces why I looked so happy being inside that small place with hardly any chair to sit. I also bought one of their prepaid cash cards that featured the picture of the Pikes Place branch.

Starbucks will always be part of my routine in life – for work and pleasure. I started this literary piece while sipping a grande, one Splenda Americano in Starbucks-Greenbelt One after a nice meal of Hummus and a Gyro (or Shawarma) at The Mediterranean restaurant inside the same mall. Starbucks always has electrical outlets in its store and is friendly to laptop (or notebook) users like myself. It will always be my personal place to think clearly, organize my thoughts, read a good book or magazine and make it the only place to meet people for business or leisure. Even if I had the financial means to set up my own coffee shop, I wouldn’t do it. I’d rather put up something else and continue to savor what every Starbucks café all over the world consistently offers me – a very good cup of coffee and the best ambience for being your self. Like what the subtitle of Howard Schultz’s book says, “One cup at a time,” I strongly recommend Starbucks for the start of something great in your career, business and thing you do great!

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