Mr. Howard Schultz had been a buyer for Starbucks Coffee since the early 1980s. On a coffee-buying trip to Milan, Italy, he noticed that crowds of people gathered each day in coffee bars to drink their specialty coffees. Schultz wondered if the same thing could happen elsewhere. Back in Seattle, he attempted to persuade his bosses to try the coffee bar idea and go beyond just selling coffee beans to restaurants. They refused. Schultz raised $1.7 million dollars and opened his own cafe in downtown Seattle. The first coffee he served was Starbucks. In less than a year, he had opened two more stores. Subsequently, he bought out Starbucks from his former employers for $4 million