Which coffee entrepreneur inspired Starbucks' founders?

The coffee entrepreneur who inspired Starbucks’ founders was Alfred Peet.

Alfred Peet was a Dutch-American coffee roaster whose approach to high-quality beans strongly influenced Jerry Baldwin, Zev Siegl, and Gordon Bowker. Before opening Starbucks, the three founders encountered Peet and his Berkeley company, Peet’s Coffee, which had helped introduce darker, fresher coffee roasting to American customers. His example showed them that a specialty coffee business could succeed through quality rather than mass-market convenience.

Starbucks opened in Seattle in 1971 primarily as a retailer of roasted coffee beans, brewing equipment, and related supplies—not as the drink-focused café chain people know today. During its first two years, Starbucks bought green coffee beans from Peet’s Coffee & Tea. In 1973, Peet stopped supplying the company and helped train Starbucks’ new roastmaster, Jim Reynolds.

The other names are coffee-industry figures, but they were not the key personal influence on Starbucks’ founders. Howard Schultz later transformed Starbucks into an espresso-bar business after visiting Italy, but Schultz was not one of the original founders and did not provide the initial inspiration.