Executive summary This paper looks at the history of Starbucks as well as the current situation of the company. The focus of the paper is on the principles on which the company was created and this is tackled in the background section of this paper. Besides the background, this paper identifies that Starbucks has had many problems relating to service operations. These problems are summarized in the statement of the problem section and they are dealt with in detail under the analysis section. As will be identified in this section, the service operations problems of the Starbucks relate to cultural, labor as well as machine issues which have not been solved by the company. In the recommendations section, the issues discussed and problems identified find their solutions as the paper in this section provides the potential way-out for the company to curb the problems discussed. Under the section of conclusion, the paper is summarized by looking at all issues discussed. Background Starbucks was founded in 1971 in Seattle, Washington. The founding of the company was by friends Jerry Baldwine, Siegal Zev as well as Gordon Bowker. The principle founding of the company was an answer to the romantic stories of a person’s love for coffee. Built on this round, people immediately loved and associated with the company as one which provides an experience with coffee. It did not take so long for the company to build six more locations. These locations were also in Seattle. Overall, the momentum for expansion by the company has been kept for a long time. In 1982 Howard Schultz joined the company as retail operations director. In Italy, he observed the operations of a certain machine called Italian espresso bars and intended to bring the idea to Seattle. He was able to convince the Bowker, Baldwin and Siegal, but was unable to incorporate it into company’s operations. Schultz purchased the company for $4 million and merged with Giornale II in 1987 and opened up 17 stores (Zimmerman, 2007). In the preceding years, expansion was in its earnest. Other stores were opened up in 1989 in Oregon, Portland. From this time onward, the management of the company has been concerned with the ideas of efficiency of service operations against maintaining the experience for which the company was founded on. Problem Statement The company faces the problem of achieving a customer service experience as well as interpersonal experience. Analysis Starbucks has faced many problems relating to service operations. These problems are domestic as well as international. The emergence of these problems has been because of the operating environment of the company which has had considerably expanded. With the increasing expansion, management of the service operations became a challenge. This is because entering the global market affected the resource base as well as questioned on the adaptability of the company to work on unfamiliar grounds. With such expansion, labor, capital and such become increasingly scarce and presented the challenge of being fulfilled (Burks-Busing, 2009). These conditions being created meant that the both the domestic and international operations could not be effectively abridged to