Retail History | Starbucks — The First Counter at 2000 Western Avenue

People queue at 1912 Pike Place and call it the first Starbucks.

The first paid rooms opened here, at 2000 Western Avenue, on the corner with Virginia Street, on 30 March 1971.

Jerry Baldwin, Gordon Bowker and Zev Siegl fitted a thousand-square-foot shop in the old Harbor Heights / Rhode Island building and put a sandwich board on the pavement. They sold whole beans, tea and spices. They did not sell espresso drinks. Siegl kept the counter; the other two kept day jobs. The first customer through the door was their friend Dan Chasan, walking to the Market with his two-year-old daughter. They poured him a free sample cup because they wanted to practise the sale.

The building was pulled down in 1976. The shop moved a short walk uphill to 1912 Pike Place, which is the oldest Starbucks still standing and the one the company now stages as the original. Howard Schultz arrived later. The siren on the first window was brown, not green.

The line at Pike Place is real. The first register was a block west, in a building that is no longer there.