Starbucks
Natarajan “Venkat” Venkatakrishnan is Starbucks senior vice president, Partner and Customer Solutions. He leads the technical and business teams responsible for food and beverage equipment as well as consumer and supply chain packaging. Venkat founded and directs the Tryer Center, Starbucks innovation incubator, where he and his team create and validate new technologies for Starbucks retail stores.
Venkat, who started with Starbucks in 2017 as the vice president of engineering for Equipment before assuming his current role in 2022, led the construction of the Tryer Center space in 2018 and co-created its operating model with Starbucks partners across the enterprise. His team is responsible for the design and deployment of new espresso machines, cooking ovens, cold brewers and new packaging innovation. This has been instrumental in creating one of the largest internet-based food and beverage equipment systems in the retail industry.
Prior to Starbucks, Venkat worked with General Electric Company for 20 years in Corporate Research, Mergers & Acquisitions and Advanced Technologies Development with responsibilities for technology and intellectual property strategy. While at GE Appliances, Venkat also founded and led two GE Appliances-funded startups, FirstBuild & Giddy, where he pioneered the use of internal innovation incubation and social product development for early product validation. Prior to GE Appliances, Venkat held roles at Ford India and Eicher Mitsubishi.
Venkat has a bachelor’s degree in aerospace engineering from the Indian Institute of Technology (IIT) in Chennai, India and has more that 50 patent filings across a range of industries and applications.
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Starbucks
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Starbucks ethically sources and roasts high-quality arabica coffee. They are known as the leading roaster and retailer of specialty coffee globally. Starbucks purchases, roasts, and serves award-winning coffee to its millions of customers. Their food and beverage offerings include Italian-style espresso beverages, cold blended beverages, seasonal drinks, hot breakfast, lunch, snacks, a bakery, and premium teas. Additionally, they sell merchandise like tumblrs and mugs as well as gift cards for special occasions. In some stores around the world, they sell alcoholic drinks. In everything they do, they always live by their mission: to inspire and nurture the human spirit – one person, one cup, and one neighborhood at a time. Founded in 1971 by Jerry Baldwin, Zev Siegl, and Gordon Bowker, Starbucks began as a single store front in Pike Place Market. Originally, they sourced their beans from Peet's Coffee & Tea. Eventually, Alfred Peet stopped supplying his own beans and began to train a new Roastmaster for the company. Following this transition, they sold the company in the 1980's to Howard Schultz who had Italian Coffeehouse aspirations. Originally a coffee bean store, Howard set out to make Starbucks an espresso-based coffeeshop and led much of the expansion of the franchise. With shifts in leadership over time, a decade was spent growing market share and defining corporate social responsibility. Starbucks went on acquire several operations as part of their strategy such as Seattle's Best Coffee, Torrefazione Italia, and The Coffee Connection. Today, Starbucks operates in the US, Canada, UK, Europe, and Asia with about 32,000 stores worldwide.