As of this June, I’ll have spent 16 years as an employee of Starbucks Coffee Company. Roughly half of my total career has been in service to Starbucks, and I can say without a doubt that it’s been the best 16 years of my career so far. So many great people, so many amazing things to work on, so many opportunities to travel to far-off places and meet other Starbucks partners who are making the Starbucks mission come to life. It’s been a roller-coaster ride for sure. It’s taken me from the heady...

After a lot of poking, reading, web-searching, and talking to friends who know the area, we have set our plans for the first phase of our “great loop” of the western US. As part of my time off for Career Coffee Break (CCB), we want to see a bunch of the sights in the western US that we’ve never had a chance to vist. Places like Zion National Park, Bryce Canyon National Park, and the Grand Canyon, to name a few. Our initial thought was to just “wing it”, but based on research we’ve determined...