The SF option for a challenge success
What makes fair trade-loving people work at Starbucks? Today I met Michael, a Starbucks manager at the store on Masonic & Fulton who’s become like the go-to guy for Starbucks fair trade stuff in San Francisco.
Michael has a TransFair USA sticker on the store door (right). He has colorful bags of Cafe Estima — the green ones printed during fair trade month — lining the top shelf of his coffee display. And he brews Cafe Estima, Starbucks’ only fair trade certified blend, from about 2 pm to close almost every day — It was brewing when I walked in.
“I was researching companies that cared about corporate social responsibility,” Michael said, “and Starbucks’ name kept coming up.”
The cynic in me thinks this may be because Starbucks puts a lotta money into PR for their CSR efforts. Still, it sounds like Michael’s gotten to lotsa nice things he wanted to do when he took the job, from getting involved with Little Kids Rock to donating pastries to the Haight-Ashbury Food Program to brewing extra Cafe Estima.
It seems that Starbucks managers have some leeway to inject a lil personal passion — into their stores. So while there may be little corporate push to market Cafe Estima, managers can provide that push — a freedom most managers don’t, or don’t know they can, take advantage of.
Fair trade’s a priority for Michael’s store, at least. Which made me ask why he wasn’t working for a non-profit really dedicated to fair trade issues. To which he said he’s not ruling out moving to a non-profit, but he’s getting to do some great stuff at the mermaid.
As to why so many Starbucks stores are failing the Starbucks Challenge? Michael named the usual reasons: the difficulty of getting all part time employees trained, the mass of corporate communications thrown at the partners, the many competing priorities Starbucks has.
It’s very clear that if Starbucks wants to really meet the challenge, the mermaid’s going to have to make that a priority, not just send out an additional corporate email or an article in Scoop.
Michael’s parting words: “I’m glad you’re doing what you’re doing. That’s all I’m gonna say”
Hi Siel,
So I went to the Starbucks a couple of weeks ago at Vermont and Prospect on the main strip in Los Feliz and….
When I asked for fair trade was met by blank look. Person taking my order then asked a couple of people who weren’t really sure, eventually a manager-type came out to ask me I wanted a French Press. I said no I wanted Free Trade coffee though I understand you probably have to French Press it (between orderee and the manager the message was confused as my wanting a French Press ['Free Trade' being ommitted]). She said they were out of it but for some reason they had already started the French Press machine with some other coffee and I had already paid for it so that’s what I got. It was amusing, it really wasn’t a simple process at all for all this to go down.
Comment by Dave — January 30, 2006 @ 9:37 pm
I’m glad this SF Sbx responded well to everything we all wanted to hear…Go Michael go…good to know that store managers do really have quite power to make some good things happen. It seems like you’re enjoying your stay in SF…except the fact that people don’t smile as much as socal ones ;-) It’s the fog! we blame it all on the fog…kidding. Let’s hear more Sbx challenge successes…
Comment by Maya — January 31, 2006 @ 6:55 am
Hey Dave — Thanks for joining in :) I’ll tag you to del.icio.us when I get back to LA — I’m forced to use Galeon instead of my usual firefox, and am having some issues with tagging up here in San Francisco. I’m really curious as to what you ended up drinking. Did they apologize for the mixup?
Maya — It really has been rather gloomy up here, weatherwise, though it was nicer today. Apparantly, it’s really been raining a lot recently, so perhaps people are even less smiley here than usual…
Comment by Siel — February 1, 2006 @ 1:05 am