How Seeing His Father Struggle Made Schultz Share Starbucks With Every Worker

Howard Schultz grew up in poverty. His family never owned a home and lived in a modest Brooklyn housing complex for low-income families. Life was tough. His father worked a series of blue-collar jobs, driving trucks, delivering diapers, doing whatever he could to make ends meet. So when things went wrong, they went really wrong.

When Howard was seven years old, his father got injured at work, breaking his foot and ankle. He was fired without any warning. With no health insurance or worker protections, the family suddenly lost their only source of income. What followed left a deep and lasting impression on Howard as a child.

Years later, when Howard Schultz became the CEO of Starbucks, he made it his mission to ensure that no one under his leadership would go through what his father had endured. In 1991, Starbucks launched its Bean Stock program, allowing every employee from executives to part-time baristas to own a share of the company. Schultz also introduced healthcare for part-time workers, tuition assistance, and other benefits that provided employees with stability and dignity at work.

But such programs weren’t new; companies like Publix Super Markets, Southwest Airlines, and Procter & Gamble had experimented with similar programs long before Starbucks. What made Starbucks’ version special was that it included everyone. At the time, most companies restricted these benefits to a small circle of top executives. But Schultz went above and beyond, giving every employee who worked more than 20 hours a week a share of the company. He had to fight hard to make it happen, but in doing so, he sparked a ripple effect that changed millions of lives.

These days, programs like Bean Stock are everywhere, from huge global companies to scrappy startups. According to The Kobeissi Letter, 80% of the 3000 surveyed employees at NVIDIA have become millionaires, and half now have a net worth above $25 million. Similar patterns of employee wealth creation have been observed at companies like Microsoft, Google, and various smaller firms, where people have built secure and fulfilling lives by owning a piece of their company’s success.

So while it wouldn’t be right to give all the credit to Schultz, he sure deserves a good share of it for helping kick this off and changing so many lives.