It cannot be easy, being green, shade-grown and responsible. It cannot be easy, being the butt of endless Dunkin Donuts commercials. It cannot be easy, watching McDonalds roll out espresso machines. It cannot be easy, being Starbucks. Evangelist-in-chief Howard Schultz roundly denies that Starbucks is losing its way. "Our best days are ahead of us," he says. To prove it, an extravagant product launch of a new blend, Pike Place (named for the company's......

Aw geez. Another noble Seattle name goes into the toilet. Redhook Brewery, the brand launched by Paul Shipman and Gordon Bowker more than 25 years ago, will become part of a corporate entity called Craft Brewers Alliance after it takes over Portland-based Widmer Brothers for a reported $50 million. Names are terribly important, as Bowker would tell you himself, were he not the most modest of men. It was Bowker, a Ballard native, who co-founded......

Sometimes, we write a trivia round, look at it for a second, and realize that it's way too difficult to actually deploy in a pub full of people who've been drinking. But a quiz is never too hard to share with our faithful, Google-armed readers. Here's a list of 10 people or groups who founded Seattle institutions, along with the years they did so. Can you correctly ID them? Without Googling, we'd get maybe 3.......

USA Today reveals that America's next would-be culture czar is already enthroned as (gulp) the nation's barrista baron. Little did Jerry Baldwin, Ziv Siegl and Gordon Bowker expect, when they sold their modestly successful coffee company to the determined guy they'd once hired to do their marketing, that he'd turn Starbucks into the world's most frequented brand. And yet, and yet. Not satisfied with the company's phenomenal growth, Howard Schultz wants to be even more......