I. Reading. Read the text and choose the best answer (a–d) to answer the questions (1–5).

Read the text and choose the best answer (a–d) to answer the questions (1–5).

In 1983, Howard Schultz was visiting Italy. In Italy he noticed people sitting at coffee bars sipping their coffee and talking. He wondered whether Americans, too, would like to sit in relaxing coffee bars, sipping good coffee and talking with their friends. Schultz returned to the United States and tried to convince his bosses to turn Starbucks, which at that time was a company that sold whole coffee beans, into a chain of coffee bars. They did not like the idea. Schultz then began to approach potential investors. Within a year, he had raised $1.7 million, and by April 1986, he had opened his first coffee bar. A year later, Schultz offered to buy Starbucks from his old bosses. They ended up selling him the company for about $4 million.

Schultz’s success in the coffee business has been quite remarkable. Sales are projected to reach $1 billion by the end of the decade and Starbucks expects to have 2,000 outlets. But the road to success was not an easy one for Schultz. The new Starbucks company lost money in each of the first three years of operation. Schultz said that he “cried a lot. But we had tremendous conviction* that this was the way to build a company and that the losses were going to end.”

It is interesting to note that Howard Schultz attributes some of his success as an entrepreneur** to a book called Jacob’s Journey, by Noah ben Shea. Here is a quote from that work: “Strength is not the absence of weakness but how we wrestle with our weakness.”

* conviction – переконання

** entrepreneur – антрепренер

1. From which continent did Howard Schultz trу to apply an idea in the United States?

A Africa B Asia C South America D Europe

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