How did Starbucks Coffee get its name & decided on the logo they have?!


Question: Starbucks was formed in November, 1985 under the name Il Giornale Coffee Company. In August 1987, Il Giornale purchased the Seattle assets, which included seven retail stores, a roasting plant and the rights to the name "Starbucks," of Starbucks Coffee Company, a corporation founded in 1971. In January 1988, Il Giornale changed its name to Starbucks Corporation.

The logo is a "twin-tailed mermaid" (the siren of Greek mythology).[22] The logo has been streamlined over the years. In the first version, the Starbucks siren was topless and had a fully-visible double fish tail. In the second version, her chest was covered by her flowing hair, but her navel was still visible, and the fish tail was cropped slightly. In the current version, her navel and chest are not visible at all, and only vestiges remain of the fish tails. The original logo can still be seen on the Starbucks store in Seattle's Pike Place Market and on certain coffee bags.

At the beginning of September 2006, Starbucks temporarily reintroduced its original brown logo on paper hot drink cups. Starbucks has stated that this was done to show the company's heritage from the Pacific Northwest and to celebrate 35 years of business. The vintage logo has sparked some controversy due to the siren's bare chest. Recently, an elementary school principal in Kent, Washington, was reported as asking teachers to "cover up" the mermaid of the retro cups with a cup sleeve of some kind.


Answers: Starbucks was formed in November, 1985 under the name Il Giornale Coffee Company. In August 1987, Il Giornale purchased the Seattle assets, which included seven retail stores, a roasting plant and the rights to the name "Starbucks," of Starbucks Coffee Company, a corporation founded in 1971. In January 1988, Il Giornale changed its name to Starbucks Corporation.

The logo is a "twin-tailed mermaid" (the siren of Greek mythology).[22] The logo has been streamlined over the years. In the first version, the Starbucks siren was topless and had a fully-visible double fish tail. In the second version, her chest was covered by her flowing hair, but her navel was still visible, and the fish tail was cropped slightly. In the current version, her navel and chest are not visible at all, and only vestiges remain of the fish tails. The original logo can still be seen on the Starbucks store in Seattle's Pike Place Market and on certain coffee bags.

At the beginning of September 2006, Starbucks temporarily reintroduced its original brown logo on paper hot drink cups. Starbucks has stated that this was done to show the company's heritage from the Pacific Northwest and to celebrate 35 years of business. The vintage logo has sparked some controversy due to the siren's bare chest. Recently, an elementary school principal in Kent, Washington, was reported as asking teachers to "cover up" the mermaid of the retro cups with a cup sleeve of some kind.

Starbucks began in 1971 when three academics—English teacher Jerry Baldwin, history teacher Zev Siegel, and writer Gordon Bowker—opened a store called Starbucks Coffee, Tea, and Spice in the touristy Pikes Place Market in Seattle. The three partners shared a love of fine coffees and exotic teas and believed they could build a clientele in Seattle much like that which had already emerged in the San Francisco Bay area. Each invested $1,350 and borrowed another $5,000 from a bank to open the Pikes Place store. Baldwin, Siegel, and Bowker chose the name Starbucks in honor of Starbuck, the coffee-loving first mate in Herman Melville's Moby Dick(so company legend has it), and because they thought the name evoked the romance of the high seas and the seafaring tradition of the early coffee traders.





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