Gordon Bowker, co-founder of Starbucks and Redhook, dies at age 82

Gordon Bowker, an influential Seattle entrepreneur who co-founded Starbucks and Redhook Brewery, has died at age 82.

Bowker, who lived in Seattle most of his life and died there Thursday, left an indelible mark on the city’s business community and the industries he was a part of, from coffee to beer to advertising.

The advertising firm Bowker started with his business partner Terry Heckler was behind the iconic Rainier Beer ads of the 1970s and 80s, some featuring croaking frogs and others half-human, half-costumed beer bottles with legs. Heckler also designed the original Starbucks mermaid logo, displayed on the company’s first store on Western Avenue near Seattle’s Pike Place Market, in 1971.

Bowker helped launch Seattle Weekly, wrote restaurant reviews and co-founded a real estate development company. He loved the challenge of starting something from scratch and he loved telling stories, said Zev Siegl, Bowker’s longtime friend who started Starbucks with Bowker and Jerry Baldwin.

“Gordon, like so many entrepreneurs, was fascinated by the impossibility of building a successful organization,” Siegl said. “He probably could tell you 27 stories about each of his companies (and) they’re all fascinating: What happened, who was in charge, the mistakes that they made. He was very much an observer, as much as a participant.

Baldwin said his friend “really was able to feel the pulse, or maybe the pre-pulse, of the zeitgeist of the moment. … He could see what was coming, and it was just part of his wiring. He wasn’t looking for it, it was just there.”

Bowker met Siegl and Baldwin while studying at the University of San Francisco, and the three would later found Starbucks in Seattle.

According to a recounting of Starbucks’ history by former Seattle Times reporter Sheila Farr, Bowker came up with the idea for a coffee company when he was routinely traveling from Seattle to Vancouver, B.C., to purchase coffee and tea from a company called Murchie’s.

Bowker’s friends began to capitalize on his trips, Farr wrote in a History Link article, and placed their own orders for pickup. That sparked the idea to bring freshly roasted coffee beans to Seattle. The three co-founders later struck a deal with Peet’s, a gourmet coffee company based in Berkeley, California, to supply fresh-roasted beans for the Seattle store.

While searching for a name for the new coffee venture, Heckler suggested that names starting with an “St” were bold and memorable, Bowker told the Times in a 2008 interview.

With that in mind, and while staring at a map, Bowker noticed the town of “Starbo.” He connected it back to the character Starbuck in “Moby Dick” and the Starbucks name was born.

But, Bowker said in the interview, there is no connection between the coffee chain and the book.

“It was only coincidental that the sound seemed to make sense.”

He also told the Seattle Times in that interview that he was tired of telling the story about how Starbucks was his idea; he didn’t want to take all the credit and he had moved on, he said in 2008.

He stayed involved in Starbucks until 1987. Siegl had exited the company years earlier to pursue other ventures, and Baldwin and Bowker put Starbucks up for sale. Howard Schultz, who had been hired as the director of marketing and would go on to run the company for decades, bought Starbucks with a group of investors for $3.8 million.

But the Starbucks founders held on to one part of the coffee empire: Peet’s Coffee & Tea. Starbucks bought Peet’s in 1984.

Bowker served on Peet’s board from 1994 to 2008 and maintained a soft spot for the coffee shops.

As Starbucks was first taking off, Bowker turned his attention to another fledging industry: craft beer.

In 1981, he founded Redhook Ale Brewery with Paul Shipman in a renovated transmission shop in Ballard, with the goal of “brewing Seattle a better beer,” according to the company’s website.

The two founders hoped to create a local alternative to mass-produced, commercial lagers. Redhook’s first ale sold at Jake O’Shaughnessy’s in Queen Anne in 1982 and the “banana beer” quickly developed a cult following.

The company, which merged with Widmer Bros. Brewing in Portland in 2007, was sold in 2019 to Anheuser-Busch and again in 2023 to cannabis-product company Tilray. It is often seen as inspiring the craft brewing movement, particularly in Seattle, nearly 40 years ago.

But when Redhook was starting out, the two founders faced skepticism, Bowker told the Times in the 2008 interview.

An investment banker told Bowker that “breweries don’t start up, they shut down,” Bowker recalled. “As soon as he said that, I thought, ‘It’s a sure thing.’ ”

He summed up his mindset like this: “Something’s been overlooked. They’re not looking at it the same way that you need to look at it to make it work.”

Bowker was more interested in getting an idea off the ground than he was in companies that grew as big as Redhook and Starbucks, he said in that interview.

Of all his numerous accomplishments, Siegl and Baldwin suspect Bowker was most proud of his two daughters and his lasting marriage with his wife, Celia Bowker. Siegl, who was with Bowker when he died Thursday at Virginia Mason Medical Center in Seattle, said Bowker’s family was not interested in speaking for this story.

Bowker grew up with his mother in Seattle’s Ballard neighborhood and nearby Burien. His father was killed during World War II when Bowker was a baby. He graduated from O’Dea High School in Seattle.

After college, he returned to Seattle where he drove taxis, worked as a Seattle Underground tour guide and wrote educational films for King Broadcasting. He played pickup basketball with Baldwin and was a fan of the then-hometown team, the SuperSonics.

Bowker loved the “quirks” of Ballard, Siegl said, and spent most of his adult life living in nearby Magnolia.

He was an excellent storyteller and listened to the stories of family and friends just as intently as he shared his own, Siegl said.

“He really focused on and enjoyed the people around him, kind of savored the moment,” Siegl continued. “He would engage in conversations … and enjoy the connection, and people really appreciated that.”

He was rarely the first to speak in meetings, Baldwin remembered, preferring instead to listen, analyze and summarize. When he shared that analysis, Baldwin said, he “always commanded attention.”

Bowker appreciated good food and wine, and loved visiting Rome and Hawaii. He developed a deep admiration for Hawaiian music, especially Hawaiian slack-key guitar.

In Bowker’s final moments, his wife, Celia, took out her phone and turned on his favorite music, a gesture that Siegl said was peaceful and romantic.

Asked what he hopes people take away from his dear friend’s life, Siegl said, “that you can lead an independent, self-directed life and have a lot of fun doing it. Gordon did that.”