How does a lone coffee store in Seattle's busy Pike Place market become North America's leading retail coffee purveyor? Starbucks created an ambiance and style that infused new chic into this age-old beverage, making it the hip drink of the '90s.

"Retail is detail," an adage cited by Starbucks' chairman and CEO Howard Schultz, is a dictum borne out in every aspect of the company's operations. It has turned the consumption of a mundane beverage that's been around for centuries into a trendy and indispensable social ritual. Before Starbucks burst onto the national scene, drinking coffee had rarely been so stylish. Now, orders for "espresso", "lattes" and "no-whip mochas" are drowning out the simpler requests of yesteryear.

Starbucks moved this beverage out of the kitschy coffee shops, with their waitresses in frilly aprons, and banished all remnants of the dark, smoky beatnik era. The Starbucks sensation is driven not just by the quality of its products but by the entire atmosphere surrounding the purchase of coffee: the openness of its store space, the beauty of its packaging, friendly and knowledgeable service, interesting menu boards, the shape of its counter, the quality of lighting, the texture of the walls, the cleanliness of the floorboards. What Starbucks recognized long before its imitators was that the art of retailing coffee went way beyond product.

The details of the total experience mattered. Insight into the importance of the coffee-drinking environment came in 1983 when Schultz, then director of retail operations, was in Milan. Noting that Italy had some 200,000 espresso bars, he observed the customs of the coffee-drinking public and experienced an epiphany about offering a haven for American coffee lovers. "Coffee houses in Italy are a third place for people after home and work," he reported. "There's a relationship of trust and confidence in that environment."

Returning to Seattle, Schultz convinced the original Starbucks founders to test the coffee bar concept. Its overwhelming success led Schultz, backed by local investors, to acquire Starbucks in 1987. Since then, Starbucks has crafted a look, a feel, a mood to catapult itself into national prominence and profitability. Every particular -- from napkins to coffee bags, store fronts to window seats, annual reports to mail order catalogs, table tops to thermal carafes -- seems to reflect what Myra Gose, director of Creative Services and self-described "keeper of the look," calls "the authentic and organic" roots of Starbucks, its strong sensitivity about community, the environment and what it takes to make a great cup of coffee.

"All our design, whether it's a packaged food or a new mug, needs to make sense and tell what we're about," Gose explains. "We're a coffee company. We don't want people scratching their heads, wondering `Hey, where did that come from?'" Underscoring Starbucks' phenomenal success is its constant vigilance over retail design and packaging. The story of Starbucks may be less about coffee.

But not just any kind of coffee company. With a product line that includes over 30 varieties of coffee beans, a heaping assortment of packaged goods, fresh pastries, teas, syrups, and preserves, and a cache of related specialty merchandise -- not to mention a new bottled product being test-marketed by PepsiCo, and several proprietary brand names in each retail store in addition to the Starbucks label -- defining and refining the corporate image is an ongoing strategic imperative.

That process is supported at the highest levels of the business. In the summer of 1992, company officers asked Starbucks' marketing staff whether the current packaging of so many diverse products accurately reflected the warm, upbeat, people-oriented style that had won the company its tenacious following. According to Gose, "From a design standpoint, we're always trying to speak with one voice, yet that one voice must also speak different languages."

To present those languages visually, several design firms were interviewed. Seattle-based Hornall Anderson Design Works (HADW) was chosen to begin with a redesign of the coffee bag. The guidelines were solidly outlined by Starbucks: 1) Do nothing revolutionary, since the company had too much equity built into the current coffee bag; 2) Retain the company logo and "blend" stamps; 3) Emphasize the company's leading-edge role in the industry and its employees' superior knowledge of good coffee preparation; and 4) Convey the company's deep commitment to the environment.

Working with several Starbucks principals, what the design team created did not dramatically alter the image of Starbucks; however, where the packaging did not reinforce the desired image, steps were taken to make it stronger. For example, the design combined terra-cotta earth tones, for the warmth and intimate feeling the company wanted to convey, with a steam pattern to represent the roasting process. An illustration style, photography specifications, limited calligraphy and the mermaid logo formed the vernacular for the Starbucks look. Focus groups helped to decide the selection of a single color for all the bags instead of different colors for different sizes. Packaging materials were selected for naturalness and recyclability.

Following the coffee bag assignment, HADW helped steer other design jobs to create an integrated, communicative packaging effect: syrup labels, shopping and serving bags, food products, gift sets, various printed collateral -- even the wrapping tissues that are used to protect breakable items. These designs have earned HADW more than 40 awards, as well as inclusion of its packaging components in the Library of Congress permanent collection. For Starbucks, the entire design strategy "fortifies an ever-present message about its leadership position and reinforces its commitment to quality products and service," says Terry Heckler, head of Heckler Associates, a long-time graphic design partner of Starbucks. Heckler is credited with not only designing the original logo but coming up with the company's name.

With so much attention going into the look of a coffee cup or pastry napkin, little wonder that a constant watch is placed over the design of the coffee bars themselves. "It didn't take top management long to realize that good store design enhances the speed of retail execution," says Heckler. The store design staff includes about 80 people divided into regional teams. Each team is headed by a lead designer working with a staff of up to 10 other designers, including several CAD drafters, and the construction manager for the region.

Starbucks' design development team is directed by Brooke McCurdy, whose job is to provide leading-edge resources to the store design effort and "to think about what we're going to look like in the year 3000, or whenever it is we hit the moon!" laughs McCurdy. "We're already looking at ways we can improve our existing design by focusing on what customers and employees think about the look of their stores, and at the same time, we try to anticipate future consumer styles. Is it going to be something new and fast-paced, or will it be a more cyclical return to the old bohemian coffee house?"

At Starbucks, no one becomes a store designer until he or she has actually operated behind the counter. "You have to work in a store before you design one, so you begin to understand what some of the hindrances and helpful things are," explains McCurdy. Though working with a set of base guidelines and stringent timelines, designers can vary the look by region and location with art, murals and lighting fixtures. "Our people get to know the neighborhood and the customers in the area, and they have the latitude to incorporate its quirkiness or uniqueness so that we don't ever produce a cookie-cutter design," McCurdy says.

At the same time, there is a subliminal unifying theme to all the stores that ties into the company's history and mission -- "back to nature" without the laid-back attitude; community-minded without stapled manifestos on the walls. The design of a Starbucks store is intended to provide both unhurried sociability and efficiency on-the-run, an appreciation for the natural goodness of coffee and the artistry that grabs you even before the aroma. This approach is reflected in the designers' generous employment of natural woods and richly layered, earthy colors (which have evolved from darker laminates to lighter tones) along with judicious high-tech accessorizing, like halogen fixtures and Zolatone walls (subtly textured splatter-paint finishes). No matter how individual the store, overall store design seems to correspond closely to the company's first and evolving influences: the clean, unadulterated crispness of the Pacific Northwest combined with the urban suavity of an espresso bar in Milan. "Comfortable without seeming too serious," says McCurdy. "An urban oasis," said the New York Times.