(**Update, 11/2/05: Starbucks Challenge 3.0 launches, with new prizes and new goals! Double the fun — Join in!)
So Starbucks agreed that, according to its own policy, company stores should French-press a cup of fair trade coffee for you, any day of the week, in the 23 countries it is licensed to. And when, during the first month of the challenge, we found out otherwise, Starbucks admitted a “break down in customer service” and sent out some emails.
But things haven’t improved since then.
Regardless of politics, most of us agree on one thing: If a company makes a promise, it should stick to it.
Join the challenge:
1) Simply visit your local Starbucks and ask: “Could I get a cup of fair trade coffee?”
2) Tell us what happens next. Was it hard or easy to get a cup?
BLOGGERS: simply blog about what happened and tag it with “starbuckschallenge” (all one word) on del.icio.us (put the Starbucks location in the “extended” description). We’ll pull all articles into a feed and run that on our site - you can run the feed too, of course, if you’d like. ALSO help us get feedback by telling people about this challenge on your blogs.
NON-BLOGGERS: tell us what happened by emailing City Hippy or green LA girl, and we’ll do the rest.
Win a prize
On Nov. 30, we’ll select three people who contributed:
- Prize #1: A 12 oz bag of Monkey & Son Velvet Hammer fair trade organic coffee, for the challenger who challenges the most Starbucks in Los Angeles County.
- Prize #2: A 12 oz bag of Monkey & Son Velvet Hammer fair trade organic coffee, for the challenger who challenges the most Starbucks in the U.S., outside Los Angeles County.
- Prize #3: Fair trade yummies from Clipper-Teas.com, for the challenger who contributes the most amusing or informative post outside the United States.
Survey results
We’ll be in frequent contact with Starbucks, but on November 30, City Hippy and green LA girl will contact Starbucks to find out what Starbucks thinks about the results of the challenge — whether positive or negative — and to get some concrete details as to what the company plans to do, if anything, in light of them.
Have a fair trade day.
Update: Some fun stuff –
- The original Starbucks Challenge launch post.
- The Starbucks Challenge FAQ
- Starbucks Challenge’s del.icio.us feed.
- Starbucks Challenge’s frappr map — Put your challenge on the map!
**Update 11/5/05: A Starbucks barista’s response to the challenge.
**Update 11/7/05: Starbucks in Singapore step up to the challenge.
**Update 11/9/05: Cindy of Starbucks puts her two cents in the blogosphere. Plus some interesting anti-Starbucks activist tactics –
**Update 11/10/05: The “break down in customer service” has been going on since at least January 2004 –
**Update 11/11/05 and 11/12/05: Major of Starbucks promises to set up a meeting with green LA girl, Starbucks CSR reps, and Starbucks district managers in LA — before the end of November. Starbucks also said it’ll add a lil video in its “new partner learning program” that’ll reiterate Starbucks’ policy to provide customers with a French press upon demand.
**Update 11/14/05: Wondering about Starbucks’ claim that all their coffee’s fairly traded? Wonder no longer.
**Update 11/15/05: Confused by the claims on Starbucks’ website? Clear the confusion.
**Update 11/18/05: No fair trade improvement at all at the Starbucks near USC.
**Update 11/19/05: Challenge stats update: 194 challenges, 161 blogs, 13 countries, and 27 states plus Washington DC. Also, don’t bother calling Starbucks’ customer service about fair trade issues. They don’t know shit.
**Update 11/20/05: The Starbucks Challenge gets a new, cool map! Check it out!
**Updates: The Starbucks CSR department tries emailing its stores, again (11/21/05) and fails a SoCal challenge, again (11/22/05).
**Updates: Starbucks workers strike for better wages in New Zealand (11/23/05) — and are charged with union busting in New York! (11/29/05)
**Update 11/26/05: Starbucks Challenge stats get WORSE during this second month.
**Update 12/1/05: Starbucks Challenge 2.0 winners announced! Congrats to Declan, Kristin, and Roger!
FEED (del.icio.us/starbuckschallenge):
Filed in: starbuckschallenge coffee csr fair-trade fairtrade starbucks losangeles california cityhippy
ok… so just for the dummy record… i didn’t understand what it meant that they needed to “french press” a cup of coffee… so i never really took part in the challenge! i now understand what it means… so next starbucks visit… i’m gonna ask for a cup of free tradde coffee!!! YAY!
Comment by aussie — November 2, 2005 @ 9:25 am
If you can get people to tag their posts with either a store ID or a zip code, I can try hacking the automatic frappering…
Comment by Robert 'Groby' Blum — November 2, 2005 @ 4:49 pm
aussie — A couple other people were confused by that too. BTW — FAIR trade. I think we’re so used to reading and hearing free trade that the phrase automatically rolls out — even when that’s really, really not what we mean –
Groby — Cool — Al of City Hippy and I do the tagging, so we’ll always include a zip from now on — Thanks for taking a crack at the hack!
Comment by Siel — November 2, 2005 @ 8:32 pm
oops! my bad! FAIR TRADE (how embarassment!) lol
Comment by aussie — November 3, 2005 @ 8:35 am
Before you get too carried away with the tagging - a store key might be even better. It looks like I can get the location of each Starbucks fairly easily with a StoreKey. (Until they change their web site, at least ;)
And that location is also in a Google-Map friendly format.
Now, if we also tag the link as challenge_passed or challenged_failed, we could do different icons, if you so choose… (And you have skills to make them. My art looks like a three-year old running with crayons….)
Still working on the ZIP code thing, but that’s actually harder. The only places that map ZIP to geo-locations charge for it… :(
Comment by Robert 'Groby' Blum — November 3, 2005 @ 4:02 pm
Did they change their website? Can’t find the store keys. Or is it just me?
Comment by Siel — November 3, 2005 @ 10:32 pm
They’re still part of the search URL. After you selected a specific store, it will show “StoreKey=xxxxx” as part of the URL. That’s the only way to find them out, AFAIK.
That’s also my secret in to find out where they are. BTW: You mind if I don’t use Frappr? They are a bit too limited for what I’m trying, and they have no web API. (For shame!)
If things go as planned, we’ll have our own Google Map, fed by the RSS feed. No user annotations, though…
Comment by Robert 'Groby' Blum — November 4, 2005 @ 11:39 am
To readers: Groby and I are working on the del.icio.us conversion to map deets via email. More later :)
Comment by Siel — November 4, 2005 @ 11:03 pm
Green LA Girl,
I have gone to the local Starbucks store here in Oxford, OH. And they are more friendly than you can imagine. They go out of their way to make things easier for anyone but the problem is they work in Starbucks where the complaint is that the coffee is overcharged.
I believe you when you say that you do not work for Starbucks and that their customer service leaves a lot to desire for. But I dont think it is location specific. It is people specific. Maybe the Barista got out of the wrong side of the bed. Maybe he/she is cross that their cat pooped on their carpet. Who knows but the challenge has been easy for me (like you say) and this post came about because I was reading Sherlock Holmes’ The Hound of the Baskervilles.
Comment by Herge — November 5, 2005 @ 7:00 pm
Hey Herge! I totally agree that the service does depend on the individual barista. However, it’s pretty clear that many, many stores — especially in the LA area — don’t even know about the French-press policy, much less educated their baristas about it. In fact, often the nice barista will want to help, but have no idea what you’re talking about.
And hey — I wasn’t being facetious about being flattered — Really! I am! I’ve always wanted to be a double agent — though one day, when I am, I hope I’m working for something more exciting than Starbucks –
Comment by Siel — November 5, 2005 @ 9:00 pm
Green - regarding my $4 pot of coffee, thats NZ$4 which is around US$2.70 ish.
Comment by Mark Derricutt — November 5, 2005 @ 11:56 pm
Ohhh — OK :) That’s much more reasonable :)
Comment by Siel — November 8, 2005 @ 5:41 pm
Another student takes the challenge! Alec Malcolm took the challenge yesterday at Starbucks Sherman oaks. After a 20 minute run around, during which they tried to discourage him -coffees no good, cant find the press, were not brewing today etc….finally got his coffee…for free!
Comment by Anna — November 18, 2005 @ 9:13 am
Hey Anna — Do you know which Starbucks this is? There are at least 5 in Sherman Oaks! :o
Comment by Siel — November 19, 2005 @ 11:57 am
Had a family outing to take “the challenge� this past weekend, at the Starbucks in Malibu, Trancas Canyon. Though the presence of my hunky cousin Ash created quite a stir w/ the female baristas, we STILL couldn’t get our damn fair trade, apparently they were out. They were super nice about it though, offering us coupons for free coffee on next visit.
C’mon Starbucks, help us out here, restock your fair trade! Must be a hot item these days…
Comment by Anna — November 27, 2005 @ 6:36 pm
WOW! Definitely an interesting thing to try! I ll try it on my next visit to Starbucks!
Comment by SFU Superstar — November 27, 2005 @ 8:31 pm
Starbucks is not an ethical company, which is why they do not actually keep their promise about Fair Trade Coffeee. They are probably delighted to have this attention, you know, “any publicity is good publicity”. I think we should be finding locally owned coffee shops in our area that already or are willing to carry Fair Trade/Organic/Shade Grown coffee and publish their websites and locations, and then go drink coffee there. Starbucks is over.
Comment by Kathleen — March 6, 2007 @ 12:53 pm
starbucks has always overcharged everyone for a simple cup of joe. mom and pops are vanishing for starbucks eats them all…. free enterprise??
i went to a local mom and pop and had a better cup
(fair trade) than starbucks burnt/ocult blends
Comment by manolo — July 14, 2007 @ 8:59 pm