Starbucks Trivia
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99 free Starbucks trivia questions with answers — food & drink quiz, new questions added Oct 2026.
49 free Starbucks trivia questions with answers. Starbucks sold nothing but beans for its first ten years, took its name from a mining town before anyone thought of Moby-Dick, and turned green because of a university. This quiz covers the whole story of the world's largest coffeehouse chain: the 1971 Pike Place founding, Alfred Peet, the siren and her redesigns, Howard Schultz's Milan epiphany and Il Giornale, the 1992 IPO, the Frappuccino it bought from Boston, Trenta and the other cup sizes, Tokyo, the Forbidden City, the roasteries, the 2008 crisis, Teavana and Evolution Fresh, Race Together, Buffalo and the union drive, and the run of CEOs from Schultz to Brian Niccol. Questions range from easy (where was it founded, what is on the logo) to hard (which store voted 19-8, what Hammarplast made). Good for a coffee-break quiz, a business-class icebreaker or a barista's night off. Every answer has been checked against the Wikipedia articles on the company, its people and products, and each question shows its source.
30 of 99 questions with answers and explanations. Play the quiz
Q 01At which famous Seattle public market was Starbucks founded in 1971?
Pike Place
Pike Place Market has housed the '1912 Pike Place' store since 1976; the 1971 original stood a block away, and the market shop kept the original brown logo.
Q 02What did the original Starbucks sell for its first decade?
Whole beans and equipment
'Whole beans and equipment' were the stock: the shop roasted and sold beans alongside grinders and brewers, offering only free tasting samples, and did not pour espresso drinks until 1984.
Q 03Which novel supplied the name Starbucks, via its chief mate?
Moby-Dick
Moby-Dick supplied the name: Starbuck is the Pequod's first mate in Melville's 1851 novel, and co-founder Gordon Bowker later admitted the link to the book was 'only coincidental'.
Q 04Which coffee pioneer, whose Berkeley company supplied the beans, taught the Starbucks founders to roast?
Alfred Peet
Alfred Peet, the Dutch-born roaster who opened his Berkeley shop in 1966, taught the founders to roast and supplied their beans until 1973, then helped train their own roastmaster.
Q 05What is the twin-tailed figure in the Starbucks logo?
A siren
A siren is the figure: a twin-tailed mermaid from Greek mythology, shown bare-breasted in the 1971 brown logo and covered up when the company changed hands in 1987.
Q 06In which year did Starbucks drop the words 'Starbucks Coffee' from its logo ring?
2011
2011: for its 40th anniversary Starbucks removed the outer ring and the words 'Starbucks Coffee', leaving the green figure alone, a change unveiled in January and rolled out in March.
Q 07Which marketing director was inspired by a 1983 trip to Milan to bring espresso bars to America?
Howard Schultz
Howard Schultz, hired as marketing director in 1982, came back from Milan convinced Americans would buy espresso by the cup; the owners refused, so he left in 1985 to open his own bars.
Q 08What was the name of the coffee-bar chain the future owner founded in 1985 before buying Starbucks?
Il Giornale
In 1987 the original owners sold him the Starbucks chain and he rebranded Il Giornale's outlets under the older name.
Q 09Starbucks opened its first stores outside Seattle in 1987 in Chicago and which Canadian city?
Vancouver
Vancouver got its Waterfront Station store in 1987, the year the chain changed hands, and by 1989 the company had 46 stores.
Q 10How many outlets did Starbucks have at its June 1992 IPO?
140
140 outlets: the June 1992 Nasdaq listing valued the company at about $271 million on revenue of $73.5 million, and the 12 percent float raised roughly $25 million.
Q 11Starbucks acquired the rights to the Frappuccino by buying which Boston-area chain in 1994?
The Coffee Connection
The Coffee Connection, George Howell's Boston-area chain, invented the blended drink and trademarked the name; Starbucks bought the company in 1994 and launched the Frappuccino nationally in 1995.
Q 12The word Frappuccino blends 'cappuccino' with which New England term?
Frappe, a thick milkshake
'Frappe, a thick milkshake' is the Boston term, pronounced 'frap'; the bottled Frappuccino launched in 1996 as the first product of Starbucks' joint venture with PepsiCo.
Q 13Which limited-edition Frappuccino, launched in April 2017, changed colour and flavour as you stirred it?
Q 21Which juice company did Starbucks buy for $30 million in November 2011?
Evolution Fresh
Evolution Fresh, a San Bernardino cold-pressed juice maker, cost $30 million; Starbucks opened the first Evolution Fresh juice bar in Bellevue, Washington, in March 2012 to take on Jamba Juice.
Q 22What is Starbucks' bottled water brand that donates five cents a bottle to clean-water projects?
Ethos
Ethos Water, bought by Starbucks in 2005, sends five cents from each bottle to the Ethos Water Fund for clean-water projects; critics say the label makes a for-profit brand look like a charity.
Q 23What was the name of the instant coffee line Starbucks launched in March 2009?
VIA Ready Brew
Unicorn
Unicorn Frappuccino ran for five days from 19 April, starting pink and mango-sweet and turning purple and sour with a swirl; it spawned novelties such as that Halloween's Zombie Frappuccino.
Q 14Starbucks opened its first store outside North America in 1996 in which city?
Tokyo
Tokyo's Ginza district got the store in August 1996 through a joint venture with the retailer Sazaby; Singapore followed that December, and Japan became one of the chain's biggest markets.
Q 15What is the name of Starbucks' largest cup size, introduced in January 2011, holding 31 US ounces?
Trenta
Venti means twenty in Italian; Trenta means thirty, though the cup holds a little more.
Q 16A Starbucks inside which Beijing landmark closed in 2007 after protests?
The Forbidden City
The Forbidden City outlet had operated since 2000; a 2007 online campaign led by CCTV anchor Rui Chenggang called it an insult to Chinese culture and it closed that July.
Q 17In July 2008 Starbucks announced it was closing how many underperforming US stores amid the recession?
600
600 stores, about 70 percent of them opened since 2006, were marked for closure on 1 July 2008, costing roughly 12,000 jobs; another 300 closures followed in January 2009.
Q 18In which country did Starbucks close 61 of its 84 stores in 2008?
Australia
Australia never took to the chain: after the 2008 cull of 61 stores the remainder were sold in 2014 to the Withers family, owners of 7-Eleven Australia; the first store had opened in Sydney in 2000.
Q 19Which chain, bought in 2003 with Torrefazione Italia for $72 million, gave Starbucks a hometown rival brand?
Seattle's Best
Seattle's Best came from AFC Enterprises, the Popeyes owner, and the deal added about 150 cafés plus a large wholesale and licensing business that put the brand in Borders bookshops.
Q 20Starbucks paid $620 million in 2012 for which tea retailer, then closed all its shops by 2018?
Teavana
Mall landlord Simon Property Group won a court order forcing some Teavana stores to stay open temporarily.
VIA Ready Brew went on sale in Seattle and Chicago in March 2009 and nationwide that September, using microground coffee so that it dissolved like instant but tasted closer to brewed.
Q 24In which year did the Shanghai Starbucks Reserve Roastery, the first outside the US, open?
2017
2017: the Shanghai Reserve Roastery opened on 6 December 2017 on West Nanjing Road, at about 30,000 square feet the company's largest store at the time.
Q 25Starbucks opened its first store in Italy, the country that inspired the whole idea, in which year?
2018
2018: the Milan Reserve Roastery in the Piazza Cordusio post office building opened on 7 September 2018, 35 years after the 1983 Milan trip that inspired the espresso-bar idea.
Q 26Which 2015 campaign had baristas write a phrase on cups to spark a national conversation, and drew backlash?
Race Together
Race Together, launched in March 2015, asked baristas to write the phrase on cups and talk about race with customers; after a week of ridicule the cup-writing was dropped.
Q 27Which Starbucks CEO apologised after two Black men were arrested in a Philadelphia store in 2018?
Kevin Johnson
Kevin Johnson flew to Philadelphia to apologise in person that April, and on 29 May the company closed about 8,000 US stores for an afternoon of racial-bias training.
Q 28Which Buffalo store became the first unionised company-owned Starbucks in the US in December 2021?
Elmwood Avenue
Elmwood Avenue voted 19 to 8 for Starbucks Workers United on 9 December 2021; the Camp Road store voted no that day, and more than 200 stores had unionised within a year.
Q 29Which annual promotional day in November 2022 saw workers at over 100 unionised stores walk out?
Red Cup Day
Red Cup Day, 17 November 2022, when free reusable red cups bring the year's busiest crowds, saw more than 100 unionised stores walk out in the 'Red Cup Rebellion' over staffing and schedules.
Q 30Who took over as CEO in March 2023 after months training as a barista?
Laxman Narasimhan
Laxman Narasimhan joined as incoming chief in October 2022, trained as a barista, took over as CEO on 20 March 2023 and was ousted in August 2024 after about 17 months.