Howard Schultz did not like the smell of burnt cheese. For weeks in 2007, he stewed about it.

At the time, Mr. Schultz hadn’t been in charge of Starbucks for years, and he couldn’t shake the feeling that the company was adrift. Starbucks, which had long sought to bring an authentic Italian coffee experience to the masses, was in his view becoming watered down and warmed over. And no feature better epitomized the decline than its breakfast sandwiches — specifically, the odor they gave off when heated.

“Whatever rich, hearty coffee aroma remained in the store was overwhelmed by singed Monterey Jack, mozzarella, and, most offensively, cheddar,” Mr. Schultz wrote in “Onward: How Starbucks Fought for Its Life Without Losing Its Soul,” the second of his three memoirs. He added: “As far as I was concerned, nothing could be further from the romance of the Italian espresso bar. I could not stand it.”

The following year, Mr. Schultz was back and the sandwiches were on their way out. It would not be the last time Mr. Schultz came back to fix a problem at Starbucks he thought no one else could. Since then, he has left and come back again, for a remarkable third turn in the C.E.O.’s chair.

In 2021, as in 2007, Mr. Schultz was no longer chief executive when the company took a turn that clashed with his idea of what Starbucks should be: Its workers began to unionize. Between last December and April, when Mr. Schultz abruptly replaced Kevin Johnson as chief executive, workers at dozens of company-owned stores filed paperwork for union elections.

Mr. Schultz, 69, appears intent on defusing interest in a union before he leaves the company next spring for the third — and, dare one say, final — time. He has thrown himself into providing new benefits and wage increases, but withheld them from employees in the union, which represents about 2 percent of the company’s U.S. work force of more than 250,000. When asked in an interview in June if he could ever imagine embracing the union, Mr. Schultz responded with a single immovable word: No.