Starbucks' Sustainable Solutions Plan

External Environmental Analysis of Starbucks and the Coffee Industry Harold Brown Strategic Management March 3, 2011

Starbucks is dominant coffee brand in North America, which also is well-known worldwide. Established in 1971 as coffee shop oriented to a niche of coffee purists, in late 1980’s it turned to be a constantly growing chain of stores that sold whole-beans and premium-priced coffee to mostly affluent, well-educated customers. In years 1992-2002 company was showing at least 5% annual growth. And by 2002 Starbucks was serving already 20M customers in 5886 stores (both operated and licensed) around the globe, had $3.3 billion net revenues and was opening 3 new stores a day in average.

Starbucks is striving to build a better company by expanding our focus in three areas that can have a significant impact. These areas include working with farmers to develop a future, bringing green retail to a global scale, and building opportunities for the younger generation.

Despite Starbuck’s natural efforts on trying to carry out sustainable business, must work towards improving/ reducing its carbon footprint on the planet. Starbucks, a multi-billion dollar company, containing over 16,850 stores in 40 countries (Lapore), follows the sustainable practices of B-corporations. Starbucks practices and strives to achieve environmental sustainability. Although, Starbuck’s tremendous struggle to increase environmental sustainability, they continue to break the rules that they have put in place through their malpractice of washing dishes and the non eco-friendly cups. Even though their gargantuan efforts towards increasing their practices, it is clear that it needs to improve its sustainability through reducing the energy

Starbucks also draws its followers and loyal customers by promoting themselves as being an environmental conscious company. Their goal is to have 100% recyclable or reusable cups by 2015. Starbucks is in the

From our beginning as a single store in Seattle’s Pike Place Market in 1971, we have sought to be a catalyst for positive change in the many communities we serve. Now, with more than 17,000 stores in more than 55 countries and a growing business in consumer packaged goods, we find our reach is greater than ever. Just as important, we continue to believe that the ultimate way to scale the power of our brand is to share the good we do and how we do it so that Starbucks and everyone we touch – from customers to coffee farmers – can thrive and endure.

In this current economic Era, it has become more evident with time, that being someone who is ruthless and unmoral is more popular, moral, profitable and more essential to being successful. This is the known motto of many of the big cooperate heads, they do this so they can far exceed their goals. Goals of making the highest profit by any means. But not all Big corporations are like this. We now have companies like Starbucks that are setting a new standard towards being Socially Responsible and globally conscious. Starbucks has been known to make huge amounts of profits over something as simple but yet so complicate as a cup of coffee. Starbucks is hugely involved towards bring social justice into its supply chain and while doing so also want to have a positive impact in the communities they enter. Starbucks isn’t the only company that’s doing something different, then the set path of “success” all ready drawn out by others.

Starbucks Environmental Mission provides a framework for decision-making at Starbucks. Starbucks Environmental Mission statement states that we will fulfill this mission by a commitment to: (1) understanding of environmental issues and sharing information with our partners, (2) developing innovative and flexible solutions to bring about change, (3) striving to buy, sell and use environmentally friendly products, (4) recognizing that fiscal responsibility is essential to our environmental future, (5) instilling environmental responsibility as a corporate value and (6) measuring and monitoring our progress for each project.

Starbucks answers this demand for social responsibility through what they call a “global responsibility” report which addresses what the role and responsibility of a public for-profit company should be (Starbucks.com, Global Responsibility). It is structured in a point by point 20 page report detailing their stance on issues at home and abroad. Some of the pages in the report links to some of their other web pages that explain the topic in question in more detail. Their report follows GRI standards relatively well. Aspects such as strategy/analysis, organizational profile, report parameters, and governance/commitments/engagements are well covered. Their economic, human rights, society, and environmental performance

Sustainability has taken the mainstream corporate world by storm since major companies realized that sustainability is directly linked to the viability of their long-term objectives. As sustainability is proven to be a motor of efficiency and innovation, stakeholders, investors, employees, and customers are demanding companies to focus not only on profits but also that those profits should not come at the expense of people or the planet. Wal-Mart and Starbucks have been early adopters of the sustainability crusade and due to their contrasting approaches towards business have developed two very distinct sustainability models. This paper will analyze the sustainability systems implemented by Starbucks and Wal-Mart, compare their strategies, elucidate how these organizations have created different corporate social responsibility systems, and finally determine which one of these approaches would better support a long-term sustainability model.

A cup of coffee in the morning seems like such a simple pleasure and certainly not one that a person would generally associate with ethical issues like social responsibility, or global corporate citizenry. However, a cup of coffee is actually a serious ethical issue. Coffee is one of the commodities that are still grown in some areas in conditions that are similar to slavery or sharecropping. Moreover, coffee shops, like many fast food service establishments, employ people at the entry level into the job market, increasing the possibility of worker exploitation. Fortunately, as the world has become more globalized, consumers have become increasingly aware of the global implications of their local actions. Therefore, some companies have taken significant steps to act in a globally responsible manner, aware that being solely or primarily motivated by profit is not necessarily a sustainable business model. Starbucks was one of the first companies to embrace corporate responsibility as one of its primary corporate goals. It extended this corporate responsibility to a global environment when it committed to purchasing coffee in a more ethical manner. In many ways, Starbucks has embraced Harvard University's Corporate Social Responsibility Initiative's definition of corporate social responsibility, in that Starbucks "goes beyond philanthropy and compliance and addresses how companies manage their economic, social, and

Starbucks business level strategy has been to become and remain the world's premier coffee franchise that operates in a sustainable and principled manner. The company utilizes a comprehensive corporate social responsibility program that is integrated in every part of the company's operations from the way it treats its employees to the way it sources its coffee.

One company that has been particularly successful in creating an overall company image in my option has been Starbucks. They have been able to maintain a dominant position in today’s market. Where in the morning most of our society needs a good cup of coffee in order to start their day. At one point, we looked at Starbucks as a high-end marketer. A sort of club to belong to. However, things managed to change in the recent years where a 4.00 cup of coffee was becoming a luxury items. This became known as the Coffee Wars. Starbuck had to now face competition from the fast food world. Which was McDonald’s and Dunkin’ Donuts. They started to look at this market as an opening to gain more customers. They started to offer their

The company plans to open a third African location in the country Algeria as well as join a business partnership with Tata Coffee located in India (The McGraw-Hill Companies, 1999). With steady annual growth, Starbucks identifies strategic objectives within energy conservation solutions to provide improvements within the organization business processes to continue to open many franchises around the world (The McGraw-Hill Companies, 1999). This summary explains Starbucks optimizing business processes and identifying potential procedures to create strategic objectives through documenting the changes in the as-is process to ensure the company obtains the vision

Starbucks recent strategy that was announced by Howard Schultz, chairman and chief executive officer of the brand was good but lacks some vital component that has the capacity of enhancing their market share. This day’s people are becoming more and more concern about global warming, so a lot of customer will tend to patronise brands that care about the earth, compare to brands that cares less. As part of their corporate social responsibilities, Starbucks need to carry out a massive orientation on the steps they are taking as a corporate organisation to save the planet. Take for instance, if a go green conscious consumer is aware of how Starbucks buys its coffee beans only from coffee farmers who follows the international best practice of cultivating and harvesting coffee beans, which helps to preserve the earth, the consumer would wants to spend his money in a company that has the same objectives with him. This can be included into their business