Starbucks operates more than 38,000 stores on six continents

Inside one of the last Sears stores in the US

Sears was once one of the most successful businesses in the US. Today, there aren’t many Sears stores left in the nation, and the ones that are still around feel more like ghost towns than meccas of retail history.

Chipotle was initially started to fund another restaurant

Founder Steve Ells was a chef at Stars, a tony restaurant in San Francisco. His original plan for Chipotle—which first opened in 1993 in Denver, Colorado—was to make enough money to open a separate, higher-end restaurant.

Comedian Nathan Fielder opened a store called 'Dumb Starbucks,' which was protected by US parody law.

European colonization contributed to coffee's spread

European colonization created channels for large-scale coffee exports with workforces based in Asia, Latin America and the Caribbean. Trade routes throughout the Middle East and the rest of the world carried the drink to new shores and changed the agricultural and economic landscapes of the countries in the Bean Belt.

NFTs have been leveraged by brands to represent physical and digital items

The buzz around non-fungible tokens has faded since 2021 to 2022, when brands including Prada and Starbucks launched their own NFTs. While Prada’s NFTs were linked to limited-edition fashion items, Starbucks’ were part of a loyalty program.

Amazon's success is attributable, in large part, to founder Jeff Bezos’ vision

Bezos parlayed a career on Wall Street into founding an online bookstore that would evolve into the largest online retailer in the world. Bezos’ story is characterized by his relentless focus on innovation and on the customer experience at Amazon.

The history of coffee

From its likely origins in what is now Ethiopia to today's worldwide consumption, this video uses a map to show how coffee conquered the world. Follow along and see how pilgrimages and centuries of trade influenced the spread of the beverage we all know so well.

See photos of McDonald's locations all across the world from the 'McAtlas.'

Explore a Sears historical timeline

Sears has existed for over 130 years, and is remembered for much more than its 2018 bankruptcy, from the Sears and Roebuck’s catalog to Discover Card and Allstate Insurance.

Sears filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy in 2018

Although the retailer may have failed financially speaking, some argue that longevity in itself is a success—the brand operated for over 130 years before that bankruptcy filing, after all.

Read about the history of gift cards

The first retailer to sell gift cards was Neiman Marcus, but Blockbuster popularized them by selling them via in-store displays in 1994. Starbucks then started selling gift cards that could be reloaded in 2001.

In 1994, Amazon was founded as an online bookseller

Books were just the start, as founder Jeff Bezos' ultimate goal was to create an "everything store," using the internet to transcend the physical limitations of brick-and-mortar retail. The Seattle-based Amazon gradually added CDs and consumer electronics, becoming a dominant e-commerce player in the late 1990s, and one of the few dot-com companies to make it through the bust.

In 2006, Macy's was worth $20B—but as of 2024, its market cap was just under $5B

Macy's went from roughly 800 to 500 stores within the same time period. Macy’s has spent the recent years since the pandemic closing swaths of stores.

Shake Shack began as a hot dog cart in Madison Square Park

The high-growth restaurant chain is one of the industry's biggest success stories. With chef Danny Meyer at the helm, the restaurant arose out of chance amid an effort to rehabilitate New York's Madison Park. Learn more of the restaurant's story here.

McDonald's 1990 opening in Moscow symbolized the USSR's fading isolation

When McDonald's arrived in Moscow in 1990—an icon of Western capitalism—it became a cultural shock. NPR's Invisibilia recounts how the chain asked new Russian employees to greet customers with American-style smiles, exploring the clash between Soviet norms and Western service culture (segment starts around 42 minutes in).

Jeff Bezos started his career working at McDonald’s

He now claims that his high school gig at the fast food restaurant taught him about efficiency, customer service, and other valuable lessons that he took with him when building Amazon.

Sears failed to evolve in a changing economy

At its peak, Sears was the largest retailer in the world, making elite objects accessible to the middle class. But in 2018, the company officially filed for bankruptcy due to massive debt and losses.

Unlike other franchises, the McDonald's Corporation owns the land and the buildings of individual stores, and franchise owners lease those assets—resulting in McDonald's often being called a real-estate company.

Macy’s revolutionized retail with fixed pricing, pay-upfront policies, and marketing

The brand soon grew into a cultural icon, hosting the first in-store Santa in 1862, and launching the Macy’s Thanksgiving Day Parade in 1924, now a holiday staple. Its flagship Herald Square store became the world’s largest, and its festive window displays set a new standard for holiday celebrations.

'Harry Potter' became one of the most successful franchises in history

What began as a story written in cafés by an unknown author grew into a global phenomenon—spanning seven books, eight films, theme parks, and video games—reshaping modern popular culture.

Expanding supermarket chains began offering coupons to attract customers in the 1940s

This was partially a customer acquisition strategy devised to lure customers into chains and away from their local independent grocers.

Multiple business choices may have hindered Sears’ financial success

There’s no shortage of potential culprits for Sears’ death, from hedge fund manager Eddie Lampert, to Amazon, to the 2008 stock market crash.

The first Trader Joe's opened in California in 1967

Joe Coulombe was inspired by his travels outside the United States and wanted to open a store that offered some of the flavors he'd tasted abroad. Now, the store's unique products attract international visitors, who view it as a tourist destination.

11,000 new US dollar stores opened between 2007 and 2017

Dollar store retailers experienced significant fiscal gains during the 2010s, which were then accelerated by the COVID-19 pandemic. But in recent years, dollar stores have been closing in large numbers and suffering financial hardship. Experts point to Walmart's strategy of decreasing prices to cater to inflation-fatigued customers, and point out that when Walmart does well financially, dollar stores typically suffer.

Stanford and Harvard are among the universities producing the most startup founders

Not all startup founders are created equal. This data visualization of the universities that produce the most startup founders is based on the number of alumni who have raised venture capital funding for their companies. That means these alums had to do much more than put "entrepreneur" in their LinkedIn bio to be considered startup founders.

Starbase is SpaceX's testing ground for their most powerful rocket, Starship

Located near the southernmost part of Texas, the complex includes rocket bays, test pads, the "Rocket Garden" where flown, cancelled, or retired spacecraft are kept. The outdoor seating area of the site's private restaurant is covered in Mk1 Starship prototype flaps.

Former Sears CEO and hedge fund manager Eddie Lampert was a reclusive billionaire who was once kidnapped from his home in Greenwich, Connecticut by criminals looking to get rich.

Amazon founder Jeff Bezos emphasizes worrying about customers rather than competition

In a 1999 shareholder letter, Bezos wrote, "I constantly remind our employees to be afraid, to wake up every morning terrified. Our customers have made our business what it is, and we consider them to be loyal to us – right up until the second that someone else offers them a better service." Motivated by fear, the entrepreneur advocates consistent innovation, experimentation, and improvement to create a better customer experience.

The early success of Facebook made Mark Zuckerberg a college campus celebrity

Within 24 hours of launching in 2004, more than 1,200 Harvard students signed up to the platform, which quickly expanded to other Ivy League and Boston-area schools within months. By year's end, Zuckerberg left Harvard to run the company in California.

Coca-Cola operates under an asset-light, divided structure

The "company" manages the brand itself, as well as its secret formula and syrup production. The capital-intensive "system" of independent bottlers, on the other hand, handles manufacturing and distribution.

Scroll through a Sears historical timeline, starting in the year 1886

The Sears story starts with railroad worker Richard Sears purchasing a declined shipment of watches for a discounted price. An interactive historical timeline chronicles the history of Sears from then onwards.

Hooters filed for bankruptcy in March 2025 after being operated by two very distinct operations

For years before that filing, the restaurant group had been operated by two different companies: one owned by private equity, and the other that includes the original founders.

Coffee production took off in the 1800s

Coffee production in South America took off in the 1800s, with Brazil establishing itself as the largest global producer in the 1840s. Today, the country grows over one-third of the world's beans and consistently leads in global coffee production, with other Latin American countries like Colombia and Guatemala.

SpaceX has launched thousands of its Starlink satellites into low-Earth orbit

Every launched batch of satellites contains roughly 60 of the desk-sized gadgets. The batch is released at random into an initial orbit, and it takes time for them to naturally spread out enough before operators begin unfolding their antennae.

Piggy Wiggly, which now has more than 500 stores, was founded in 1916 and was the first self-service supermarket.

Why the James Beard Awards finally recognized a coffee professional

Jack Benchakul is the sole coffee maker at Los Angeles' Endorffeine and the first in the coffee world to be recognized by the prestigious food and drink awards. His attention to detail mirrors the level of craft cocktail makers whom the awards have historically praised.

The company building Irish pubs across the globe

The Irish Pub Company is a Dublin-based business specializing in designing Irish pubs around the world. The outfit has created over 2,000 custom Irish pubs in over 100 countries, each with its own distinctive flair incorporating essential features of the classic Irish pub. Read about the founders and their clients here.

A quick guide to everything SpaceX

SpaceX has single-handedly reignited commercial space exploration, with its reusable rockets, broadband satellite constellation, and plans to populate Mars. The company has gone from a mere idea in 2002 to the world's most well-known private space company. Learn the basics about this pivotal company with this quick guide from CNET.

Many of the projects major consulting firms work on are kept secret, some firms provide a few examples of real-world client work

A list of client work examples from McKinsey includes a case study on how the firm helped Starbucks design more inclusive stores, and many more.

SpaceX was built to achieve Elon Musk's vision of making humans an interplanetary species.

See Walt Disney's corporate strategy document from 1957, complete with a plethora of Mickey Mouse illustrations.

Southwest Airlines was profitable for nearly 5 decades, offering free whisky, cheap late-night tickets, and free-for-all seating allocation—despite how hard it is to make money running an airline.

Stanford’s ‘How to Start a Startup’ series

Stanford’s archive of lectures about creating a startup includes advice from Y Combinator notables such as former YC president and OpenAI CEO Sam Altman and YC Cofounder Paul Graham.

After the Boston Tea Party, colonists switched to coffee, which became the main morning drink for revolutionaries.

After the Boston Tea Party (1773), colonists boycotted tea and turned to coffee, with coffeehouses becoming hubs for revolutionary discussions. The stimulating import from the Caribbean helped shape the nascent American taste.

McDonald's became the first American fast food restaurant to open in the Soviet Union in 1990.

Coffee brewing likely originated in Ethiopa and the Arabian Peninsula

A mixture of merchants and colonialism then launched the drink across Europe and the New World. Many European coffee traditions, like the Viennese custom of serving it alongside a small cup of water, are remnants of how coffee has been prepared in the Middle East for centuries.

Visualize every brand that AB InBev owns

The giant beverage holding company AB InBev owns many, many more brands than just Budweiser and Bud Light. From Africa to Asia and beyond, this image helps visualize the immense number of brands that AB InBev is responsible for.

As of 2024, Macy’s wanted to monetize its store closures through real estate deals

In a 2024 earnings call, Macy’s noted that while it’s remodeling and investing in some of its brick-and-mortar locations, it seeks to shutter other stores in lower-performing locations. It’s estimated that Macy's will close 150 locations through 2026.

Before 'The Muppet Show,' Jim Henson produced slapstick coffee commercials featuring the puppets.

Red Lobster lost $11M on endless shrimp promotions—but its real estate holdings were what dragged it to bankruptcy

Golden Gate Capital, a PE firm, bought Red Lobster in 2014 for $2.1B. Golden Gate then sold Red Lobster's real estate, more than 500 storefronts, which generated $1.5B in revenue and helped finance the PE firm's acquisition of the company. Analysts say increased debt, high rent costs, and low equity put Red Lobster in an impossible position, leading to its 2024 bankruptcy filing—although the shrimp bill probably didn't help.