What Happens After You Sell to Starbucks? For George Howell, Everything.

0:10Hello friends, I'm Ray Latif and you're tuned into Taste Radio, the leading podcast for entrepreneurs, makers, makers, and innovators, in the food and beverage industry, George Howell may have sold his company to Starbucks, but he never sold out. A pioneer of the specialty coffee movement, George began his journey in 1975 with the founding of the Coffee Connection, a beloved Boston-based chain that helped redefine what American coffee could be. Nearly two decades later, Starbucks acquired the company, but George wasn't finished. In 2012, he re-entered the retail scene with George Howell Coffee, a brand rooted in his unwavering commitment to quality, transparency, and education.

1:00In this episode, George shares how his dual passion for art and exceptional coffee sparked a revolution in cafe culture long before Starbucks became a household name. From modest beginnings to becoming a global advocate for farmers and flavor integrity, George has always played the long game, prioritizing substance over trend. He reveals the untold story behind the drink that evolved into the Frappuccino, why so many cafes missed the mark on customer experience, his unapologetic stance on flavored coffee, and why black coffee should be as revered as fine wine.

1:43Hey, folks, it's Ray with Taste Radio. Right now, I am honored to be sitting down with George Howell of George Howell Coffee. George, it's great to see you. Very good to see you, Ray. Thank you for having me. Yes, you are an icon in the coffee space. I think anyone who hears your name knows that George Howell has a lot to do with the elevation of premium coffee in this country. and in our office, coffee is sacrosanct. It's very, very important to drink good coffee here. I offered you a cup, probably not thinking that, I don't know, I wasn't really thinking as much as I probably should have, that you probably had a few this morning already.

2:25Oh, yeah. I'm tasting our coffee all the time. How many cups of coffee would you say you drink every day? I can keep it fairly limited, actually. It can vary from typically two cups to quite a few. Okay. It just depends what's on the agenda for the day. And obviously you drink black coffee. Always. Well, no. When I go flying off to somewhere and it's on an airplane or driving up to my place in Maine, I'm getting cappuccinos or I'm adding milk. Okay. Because frankly, the black coffee is not worth it. How do you mean? It's generic at best. Oh, I see. You're stopping somewhere to get coffee. I'll stop somewhere and get it, particularly my age, right?

3:09I need the coffee when I do a five-hour drive or whatever. You don't bring coffee with you? No, because you put it in a thermos and it starts to get stale. It changes. Okay. Over time. So I don't like that. But the gas station coffee is... Oh, God, forget that. Where do you stop? I'm curious. If I want a black coffee, I'll stop in Portland at Tandem. Okay. They're pretty good. Okay. Good to know. And so there I will order a black coffee. If I'm stopping at any of the other stops and, you know, the DDs of the world and the Starbucks's of the world and so on, then I will get a cappuccino, which Starbucks makes a fairly good cappuccino.

3:52I think a lot of people who are listening to this would be surprised to hear that you are the inventor of the Frappuccino. Okay. That's first correction. Okay. Okay. Good correction. I cannot tell you how many times on podcasts and elsewhere. All the research that I've seen. I know. Okay. No matter what I say and do, I'm always given that benefit. We're going to clear it up on Taste Radio today for everyone listening. In fact, that might be the title of this podcast. George Howell is not the creator of the Frappuccino. Let me take credit for saying that. Okay. Right. Why has everyone gotten that wrong?

4:26Again, it doesn't really seem like something you would have created. What they bought was the name. Okay. Very simply. And the name was my marketing person at that time, really a brilliant guy, Andrew Frank, who came up realizing FRAP for New England, that's a standard drink, Frappuccino, that simple, right? But the rest really has a history starting in the early 80s through the coffee development group that was coming together to really help support the burgeoning specialty coffee industry, which was still in its infancy. In there, they started talking about an iced drink, which involved simply intense coffee, sugar, milk, put together, put in a granita machine.

5:13What is a granita machine? Like granita drinks that you'll see in Italian locations, where the drink is churned round and round and round. So you keep a very super smooth, crystallized drink, typically using fruit. But here, in this case, it's with coffee. And there were several articles that I noticed back in the 80s written on this. And then in 1984, they tested it out in the Los Angeles Olympics. And it was very successful. And I was aware of all of that because the one thing I do is I read a lot in terms of what's happening today. But it wasn't until the late 80s that I visited an espresso company that was since bought by Starbucks, but at that time was independent, that had a granita machine and they were making that drink.

6:07I tasted it for the first time and said, wow, this is definitely going to be very popular. So we brought back the concept, which is those three ingredients. Back here, I handed it to Andrew Frank, my marketing person. He put together the right ratio of sugar, milk, and coffee. And you need the right amount of sugar so that you don't get the heavy crystallization and it becomes a very smooth, creamy type drink. and Frappuccino was born. It's as simple as that. So what you were serving, I think, is probably significantly different than what is currently served at counters at Starbucks. That's correct.

6:49All Starbucks got, really, they got the name Frappuccino, and they applied it to what some folks were developing in Los Angeles. We're now serving, at our cafes, the original. And if you want to taste what our Frappuccino at Coffee Connection tasted like, try it. Okay. Although you're not calling it that. No, we can't. No, no. The original. Yes. Coffee Connection, your original chain of coffee stores that was eventually acquired by Starbucks. Yes. When you decided to launch your first cafe, was your background already in coffee? Not at all. Was it a passion project? Yeah, it was. A little complicated, but I really come from the art world.

7:33I dabbled in painting, but I really felt that I didn't have a talent enough to really be significant. And then I started representing certain artists, indigenous artists from Mexico, the Uxarica. And I was exhibiting that art on the West Coast where I, my wife, and two children were living at the time. Around 1974, I really, with a small trust, I really felt the need to come back east and do something. We had to make more income, growing family, third kid on the way. I wanted to exhibit the art, but exhibiting indigenous art in the 1970s does not make you money, period. That's a love affair. End of story.

8:20And by the way, that art is still exhibited on in our cafes today. But in any case, came back east and realized that the coffee was dreadful here, just dreadful. It's in the West Coast, especially the San Francisco, Berkeley area, where specialty, as it's called, coffee was really born with the beginning of Pete's and other roasters that started getting much higher quality coffees that were coming in through, I have to name her Erna Knudsen, a story in its own right, an extraordinary woman who started as the secretary of a coffee company and became its owner in a number of years, right? And revolutionized what was available.

9:02But in any case, we decided, hey, we saw the success of cafes, these specialty cafes starting to happen on the West Coast. Let's do it there. And I can exhibit my art on top of that, or the art of the Ouijatica. So Lori and I embarked on creating the coffee connection. Entrepreneurs often are successful because they're doing things that other people didn't think of doing. That's right. It's really seeing the opportunities before you. Yeah. And acting on them. And also giving the customer what they want. And I think specialty coffee or really any premium food or beverage category, or really any premium industry, there's an important aspect of it that isn't always followed as much as it should be.

9:50And that is customer service. I feel like specialty coffee and customer service should go hand in hand. They need to go hand in hand. And it always surprises me when I go to a high-end coffee shop and the customer service is not there. Because I enjoy the coffee, but the experience is downgraded or my perception of this experience is downgraded because the person was standoffish or, you know, sometimes you encounter baristas who just, they have a chip on their shoulder or they think they're better than the customer and say, okay, fine. I'm never going to come back here. I'm just, you know, there's, this happened in San Francisco.

10:26I was in San Francisco last week. There's like, you know, there are five coffee shops all within, you know, two blocks of each other. And if you're going to, you know, be a jerk to me, I'm sure I can go somewhere else and get as good a coffee experience, at least from a liquid standpoint. But what did you stress? How did you teach your employees to invest as much of their work in the service aspect as they did in the actual preparation of the coffee? Well, I have to say one of the advantages was we were selling stuff that was so superior to everybody else that we sort of often had the pick of the litter.

11:02Not that we didn't have on occasion bad service. You can have people sick and not coming in, And any number of reasons that create a moment of bad service, right? But we really had people who actually felt that they could be proud about what they were selling. You know, and here I was behind the counter. I mean, I was behind the bar. My wife was doing the cafe part and I was doing the retail. So I talked about the coffee a lot. They wanted to learn, right? And they were drinking the black coffee quite a bit. And it was black coffee. I wanted them to do it that way to understand that's the drink we're selling, right?

11:41The milk and all the rest of it, people may want it. That's great. So we serve high quality milk and all the rest of it, but it's the black coffee. But I think it's the pride. And, you know, as Coffee Connection grew, I did feel that we really had to treat people very well. When Starbucks had bought us in 94, we had health insurance for our employees that was every bit the equal of what Starbucks was offering. Many of our programs were very similar that way in terms of benefits. And Starbucks at that time was way ahead of its time as well. So treat your employees well. A hundred percent. That's the key to good customer service and making them feel like they're a part of the business as opposed to just working there.

12:25That's exactly right. I mean, I think that's really critical. And again, there was that pride And we have that now. We're going to have new packaging that will be, once again, educational in a way that no other coffee bag is. You know how you have the bags that give you three words like grapefruit, this fruit, and the other thing, and so on. They're all forgetting, including myself, that there's a particular flavor that we're all forgetting 100 % to bring up. Coffee? Coffee. 100%. So if you ask a customer who's not been to our cafe or our type of cafe before, and they're looking at all of this, and you say, what are you looking for?

13:11And you suggest maybe you'd like to start with a coffee coffee. You'd be surprised how many people say, yeah, I want a coffee coffee. I don't want a grapefruit coffee. Middle C on the piano. I don't want something that tastes like sea moss. In fact, I don't know what sea moss tastes like. So all our bags will show you what we feel is the proportion of pure coffee flavor to the fruit or other substances we mentioned. I'm glad you brought this up because I think we're at a point right now where consumer brands have overcomplicated things. Yeah, yeah, yeah. I totally agree. And let me, I have to bring that because it's a pet peeve of mine.

13:49Yeah. We all put altitude down, how high the coffee is, because it's understood that generally speaking, the higher the altitude up to a limit, like 6 ,000 feet, 5 ,000, maybe higher now, that's where you get the higher quality coffees. They take longer to mature. They produce more flavor, generally speaking, right? Why is it that everybody insists on giving you meters? Fair point. I mean, insane, right? At least we still put the altitude, but we at least put it in feet. Right. And I don't know another roaster who does that. It's such a good point because, look, why are you making it more difficult for the consumer?

14:31Why are you making it more difficult for them to understand? Sure. Yes. Okay. If we break it down, yes. Meter, three feet, fine. But why are you making them do the math? And I think the point of reference is so important. Yes, I think the point of reference for a lot of coffee is, okay, it tastes like this, or you might get notes of that. And they do this in the whiskey and wine and beer world as well, and in all kinds of beverage and alcohol. But at the end of the day, I think people just want coffee, or they just want beer, or they just want wine. Wine's a little bit more difficult. But anyway, the simplicity of great is I think where we're coming to right now.

15:08People know something is great almost by the fact that there's less to talk about. The key quality in whatever it is that they sell is that it is premium or great or specialty. It's going to sound like I'm saying, well, dumb it down. I'm not saying that at all. I'm saying that you have to take a different tack to getting people to try this product. I cannot tell you how many places serve aged coffee. One of the things we do in education these days is we do seminars, and we're going to increase that. But one of them is we have a bag of the same coffee, two bags of the same coffee, same harvest, same farm.

15:48And one of them we keep in the warehouse, airtight in a bag. The other one we have frozen, and we roast and brew the coffees the same day and serve it side by side. And the difference is night and day. I call it an inoculation. I mean, I think just what you're talking about, even if you just said, and I'm sure you say this to your customers, we freeze our coffee beans to lock in the flavor that you should expect from what the farmer intended to give you. That's exactly right. Yeah. And I think that's a really simple message that goes a long way. Yeah. And, you know, when you're talking about trends and forecasting trends and, you know, what's going to be the next hot thing in coffee, I mean, I'm sure that doesn't mean anything to you because great coffee is always going to be great coffee.

16:34That's where I am parting ways to some degree with some of the trends going on because there was a trend in the 80s, in the early 80s of flavored coffee. You remember that, right? Sure, of course. And you'd walk by a mall and you'd smell the cafe a mile away. Yeah, hazelnut. That was awful, right? Just awful. I'm reminded every time. Well, now they're starting to flavor coffee again. Yeah. At origin. Okay. By taking the green beans and you have to ferment it, you have to take the fruit off and everything else. And while you're doing that, now you can add pineapple to it and all these other things.

17:12Wait, what? Oh, yeah. So we're getting infused coffee now, green, that's sold then to roasters here who are beginning to sell it. So this is one of the trends that are happening now. I think it's terrible. I'm not going to sell it, period. But you also have new experimental processes that will emphasize a particular flavor note that's found in a coffee, but to the exclusion of other aspects that are within that coffee, right? Sort of psychedelicizing it, but also losing some of its breadth and depth in doing so. I wouldn't be surprised if we start to see Starbucks embracing that trend or incorporating some flavored beans into their...

17:58Well, they need to do better than putting olive oil in their coffee. Well, that's... Yes, yes, yes, yes. Quick break. If this episode has you thinking about what's next in food and beverage, explore BevNet and Nosh Insider, our subscription platform with deeper insights from the BevNet team. Visit tasteradio.com slash insider to learn more. George, it's very evident your passion for coffee. And I get the sense that you're always wanting to learn. You're very much a student of coffee as much as you are an educator of coffee. And you said something interesting earlier when you talked about, I read everything I can about coffee today, as opposed to what happened or what was going on with coffee 10 years ago, what might happen with coffee 10 years in the future.

18:44That's not necessarily the way a lot of founders I've spoken with think about their particular industry or category. A lot of them are pulling from the past. A lot of them are thinking about the future, but you're thinking about what's happening on the ground right now. Why? Yeah. Well, again, because I'm really rooted in that. I mean, let me go back to, I sold the company, Coffee Connection, in 94. I was invited a few years later to become a quality consultant to Brazil, working with the United Nations and the National Coffee Association, not National Coffee, the World Coffee Association. And it was called the Gourmet Project.

19:21And this was to zero in. It was five countries involved, but I was involved strictly with Brazil to produce higher quality that could then sell to this burgeoning specialty movement to get higher prices. Because farmers very often are having to sell coffee at below the cost of production. I mean, this was becoming a miserable job in the 90s and going into 2000. So I spent two years going to Brazil a whole lot, traveling through the farms and so on, becoming familiar with how things are done there and so on. At the end of two years, when the project was concluding, I just refused to do the typical thing, which is write a long manual explaining how it to be done and all the rest of it and walking away with a big piece of paper and nothing really done at all.

20:12So instead, short report, but let's have an international competition. Let's bring in coffee roasters from around the world, from Asia, from Europe, from the States. So that's what I'm about, was suddenly realizing that the source of the great coffees I'm getting come from really driven craftspeople. You can talk to 10 people who make shoes. One of them might be one who, despite the fact that they're only not making any more than the other one, is making a great shoe because they care. And I want to buy from that person. The same thing with coffee. We're looking for those relationships. This organization that we call Cup of Excellence started that way, and that's what it's looking, to connect roasters to farmers.

21:02And I'm still dedicated to that. That's what I will always be dedicated to. That's the excitement I have. I still travel, and I'm 80, to these countries. I go with my daughter now, who's taking over the purchasing of coffee, but we go together to Kenya. We were there just a few months ago, Guatemala last March, talking to farmers, seeing how it can improve, cross-pollinating, because what we see in Kenya may not be done in Guatemala or vice versa, so there is that interchange. and we learn a great deal that way too. And it keeps us up to date in terms of what's happening, climate change wise and all the rest of it.

21:41But I'm dedicated to them like I was to the artists back 50 years ago. Right, same thing. And that's what drives me more than the money. I mean, it's a beautiful business you've created for yourself. The way you live seems to be in parallel to the way you work. And I think that's really important. You can't be one thing for eight hours or 10 hours and something completely different. We often talk about work-life balance on the podcast and it's so difficult, but I think personality-wise and just what makes you content and happy shouldn't be exclusive to one thing or the other, right? Right. Yeah.

22:24And if it makes you happy to work with these farmers and make it clear that you appreciate what they're doing and you pay for what they're doing. Exactly. I mean, a lot of the coffees now, when it reaches a certain price, like our Kenya, Mamouda, for instance, we fly it. Screw putting it on a ship and waiting two months. When it's 10, 20 % of my cost to begin with, I'm flying it. Yeah. Because I get it in much quicker. It's much fresher. and I have guaranteed that it's not going to age, not even slightly. So yeah, it's doing things the right way. Yeah. I would describe you, George, as a successful entrepreneur, as a successful founder.

23:07And I often wrap up these episodes by asking a founder how they define success, how they define a life's work. And certainly you have a long way to go still because a lot more cafes you can open, and a lot more coffee knowledge you can share with this world. But how do you define success? I mean, the first success, the actual experience of it is sharing what I know, you know, with a customer. One of the things that I still am wrapping my head around is how do I get more people to drink black coffee? And I know that's not necessarily the answer you might be looking for. You want it broader, but...

23:48I'm not looking for any specific answer. The more people I can get onto black coffee. and drinking it more like wine. And I recognize it's much more difficult to do because you've got to brew it. Wine, you just pour it out of a bottle. You've still got a ways to go. You can take the greatest coffee in the world and destroy it in five minutes while you're brewing it, right? So I realize that. But to the degree I can get people to think black coffee and to drink it and taste it, that would be fantastic for me. You know, as long as my life is good, I don't have to be the millionaire flying on my private jet, right?

24:24That's not what I'm after. And I'm far from that. It's more of that sharing and setting up cafes that people go to because they can't get that elsewhere. Well, I have an idea. I remember when I, I think it was at Dunkin' Donuts they went to for the first time, maybe in my life. And I asked for a cup of coffee and they said, how do you want it? And I said, regular. I just want a regular cup of coffee. I didn't think to say black. And the coffee comes back and it's loaded with cream and sugar because that's what regular meant. Yes, yes. That's what regular meant back in the day. If you wanted a regular coffee, it was just a sugar bomb and milk bomb.

25:01How about if we start describing black coffee as George Howell? If we say, I wanted George Howell. And they'll be like, oh yeah, I know what that is. I want a black cup of coffee. Then your legacy would be cemented. I know. Oh, I've thought of that. Okay. Have you really? You've come in, no milk. I'm sorry. We just served coffee. We just served George Howell style. But we'd be out of business in a day. Right? Yeah. So far. And we have to do things right. And there's a moment to have a great cappuccino and so on. Let's face it. George, it's been such a thrill to sit down with you and chat with you for this past hour.

25:37I can't thank you enough for coming in. Thank you. And for sharing so much insight and knowledge, not just about coffee, because that's been amazing, but about your experience as a founder, as an entrepreneur, and what you've learned over the years. Once again, thank you so much and really appreciate the time. As you can tell, I love talking about coffee and it was great talking to you, Ray. Thank you so much. Thank you for the opportunity.

26:01That brings us to the end of this episode of Taste Radio. Thank you so much for listening. Taste Radio is a production of BevNet.com Incorporated. Our audio engineer for Taste Radio is Joe Cratchy. Our technical director is Joshua Pratt, and our video editor is Ryan Galang. Our social marketing manager is Amanda Smirlinski, and our designer is Amanda Huang. Just a reminder, if you like what you hear on Taste Radio, please share the podcast with friends and colleagues. And of course, we would love it if you could review us on the Apple Podcasts app or your listening platform of choice. Check us out on Instagram.

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