The Starbucks Business Model What can you learn from how Starbucks brews success?

Books about Starbucks don't come in as many flavors as the company's beverages, but busy authors are closing the gap. With four titles either recently published or set to be published this spring, bookstores will carry at least eight books about the Seattle coffee chain. Each purports to reveal why Starbucks is one of the fastest-growing companies in recent years, tells you how to invest in the next Starbucks or turn your company into the next Starbucks, or simply marvels at the genius of Howard Schultz, the Starbucks chair whose own book, Pour Your Heart Into It: How Starbucks Built a Company One Cup at a Time, appeared in 1997.

What can you learn from the books? Starbucks' story is endlessly fascinating because of the unusual way the company has built a global chain and a global brand, explains Joseph Michelli, a Colorado Springs, Colorado, consultant and author of The Starbucks Experience: 5 Principles for Turning Ordinary Into Extraordinary. "Unlike McDonald's, which is a franchise, [Starbucks] retained ownership through corporate-owned locations," Michelli says. "And unlike traditional marketing where you'd use a lot of ad dollars, the brand has leveraged itself without advertising."