Pour Your Heart Into It
Howard Schultz tells the story of how Starbucks went from a single Seattle coffee bean retailer with four locations to the global espresso bar chain that reshaped American coffee culture. Schultz joined the original company in 1982, traveled to Milan, fell in love with the Italian espresso bar, and got turned down when he pitched the concept to his bosses. He left, raised money, started his own chain called Il Giornale, and came back two years later to buy the original Starbucks and merge the businesses. The book covers every rejection from the 242 investors who turned him down, the partner conflicts, the IPO, and the values he tried to build into a company that grew from 11 stores to 1,300 in a decade.
Where Pour Your Heart Into It keeps showing up
One of our editors' lists features this novel.
What you might want to know about Pour Your Heart Into It
The questions readers send us most often, answered without spoilers.
Howard Schultz tells how he turned a small Seattle coffee retailer into a global chain, walking through investor rejections, partner fights, and the values he tried to build into a fast-scaling company.
Pour Your Heart Into It was written by Howard Schultz and published in 1997. It chronicles the early growth of Starbucks under Schultz's leadership. He later wrote Onward (2011) about returning as CEO.
Reading Pour Your Heart Into It first builds chronological context, but each book stands on its own. Pour Your Heart Into It covers the early growth years; Onward covers the 2008 turnaround.
Pour Your Heart Into It is 351 pages in standard print editions, though page counts vary slightly between hardcover, paperback, and large-print formats.
At an average reading pace of about 250 words per minute, Pour Your Heart Into It takes most readers 5 to 8 hours to finish.
Pour Your Heart Into It is a standalone novel by Howard Schultz, not part of a series.
Pour Your Heart Into It is available in hardcover, paperback, ebook, and audiobook formats from Amazon, Bookshop.org, ThriftBooks, and most major bookstores.