If You Had Invested $1,000 in Starbucks' IPO, Here's How Much You'd Have Today

No restaurant business has been more successful than Starbucks (NASDAQ: SBUX) over the last generation.

Under the guidance of former CEO Howard Schultz, Starbucks went from a handful of sleepy stores in Seattle to a global coffee empire with more than 30,000 locations, as well as products that fill the aisles of supermarkets and convenience stores and a robust licensing business.

Starbucks' massive returns alone make it a compelling investing story, but there are two other reasons why investors may want to study its history. First, it happened in front of all of us. Starbucks has long been mocked for being ubiquitous, but almost any American could see that the company was growing like a (caffeinated) weed throughout the 1990s and 2000s. As famed investor Peter Lynch often advised, Starbucks is the classic "buy-what-you-know" stock.

Source Fool.com