Starbucks' Secret Weapon

Starbucks' Secret Weapon

Starbucks' Seattle headquarters is a temple to coffee, with walls of muted espresso-colored woods enclosing trees ripe with coffee cherries and barrels of roasted beans. But one floor stands apart. Two flights up, where Michelle Gass has been transforming Seattle's Best Coffee, there’s an explosion of bold reds and oranges, with silver streamers dangling from the rafters and discarded party hats from a weekly coffee tasting.

"We are so serious about our coffee. We love coffee," says Gass, 43, eyes wide, a 15-year Starbucks veteran. She loves shaking things up, too. She led Starbucks in a new direction in 1996 by making a huge success of Frappuccino, now a $2 billion brand. She ran the company's big turnaround for Chief Executive Howard Schultz after he returned to the top job in 2008. She led Starbucks to triumph in the usually reviled world of instant coffee with the introduction of VIA in 2009. Now she's going to run Europe, the Middle East and Africa for the company.

Popular in the Community

Close

What's Hot