Howard Schultz Serves Spiritual Caffeine at a Huge Meeting for Starbucks Managers

It may feel like a routine of pouring coffee and steaming milk, but working at Starbucks is way, way more than that. That was the message from Starbucks Chief Executive Howard Schultz to about 2,100 Starbucks district managers at a global leadership event this week. Each attendee is responsible for a group of stores.

The gathering in Seattle included a lot of coffee and a no small amount of noncaffeine pep, too. The stakes are high: Starbucks is pursuing at least 10 percent revenue growth and 1,600 new stores globally in the next fiscal year. The company has been holding these conferences since 1996, and Schultz said during an earnings call in July that recent meetings “directly contributed to the record results we reported in 2013 and now are exceeding in 2014.”