For Starbucks CEO Howard Schultz, deepening customer relationships on an authenticity scale leads to inimitable brand loyalty.
And that is what has happened at Starbucks.
During the company’s Jan. 22 fiscal first-quarter conference call, Schultz talked about Starbucks’ latest achievements.
Same-store sales jumped 9% in the U.S. during the first quarter as sales rose 12%, to a record $5.4 billion.
Schultz noted that the first-quarter performance reflects the company’s relevancy and the “the success of the accretive flywheel positive effect” of retail, CPG, digital, mobile loyalty card, and investment strategies coming together around the world.
“Starbucks Coffee Company is connecting more deeply with more customers across all day parts around the world than ever before, and we are delivering quarter-after-quarter of record-breaking financial and operating results, despite the accelerating shift in consumer behavior away from traditional bricks and mortar retailing and despite challenging macro-economic foreign exchange, geopolitical, retail, and consumer headwinds that continue to negatively impact many other national and global retailers,” Schultz explained, according to Seeking Alpha.
What’s more, Schultz said plans to build more than 500 coffee forward Starbucks Reserve stores in key global markets are well underway.
“Starbucks Reserve stores provide customers with a unique, highly premiumized in-store experience that showcases the finest assortment of exclusive Starbucks Reserve micro-lot single varietals and new specialized coffee brewing methods to an intimate 1-on-1 partner customer experience,” he said. “But by creating more opportunities for more people to engage with us more often, both inside 
and outside of our stores, Starbucks’ integrated highly coordinated retail and wholesale strategy is driving our business and our growth around the world.”
Schultz added that Starbucks is redefining the customer-facing and partner-facing mobile and retail experiences of the future.
“But key to our business, and what no other consumer brand or retailer can even approach, is the deep, authentic connection we have with our customers and that our customers have with our people in the Starbucks brand,” he said.