Starbucks was founded in 1971 in Seattle, Washington, when three partners opened a single shop at Pike Place Market selling fresh-roasted whole bean coffee and equipment. The company took its name from a character in Herman Melville's Moby-Dick, a nod to the seafaring tradition of the early coffee trade. Over the following decades it grew from that one storefront into one of the most recognizable coffee brands in the world.
The brand is closely associated with the rise of café culture in North America. After Howard Schultz joined and later led the company, Starbucks reimagined the coffeehouse as a welcoming "third place" between home and work, and helped introduce a generation of drinkers to espresso-based beverages and darker, fuller-bodied roasts.
Starbucks is known for its signature roasting style: a deep, bold roast that gives its coffee a distinctive richness. Blends such as the smooth, balanced Pike Place Roast, the dark and intense French Roast, and the full-bodied Caffè Verona have become everyday favourites, drawing on beans from Latin America, Africa and Asia/Pacific growing regions.
At ECS Coffee, we carry a curated selection of Starbucks coffee in convenient single-serve formats: K-Cup pods compatible with Keurig brewers, produced under licence for the Keurig system, plus Starbucks Flavia Freshpacks for Mars Flavia office machines. Today the company operates tens of thousands of locations worldwide, yet its packaged coffee lets you enjoy those same signature blends wherever you happen to brew. Explore our Starbucks collection to bring familiar, café-quality flavour to your home or workplace, one cup at a time.
