Beyond their meager fair trade offerings, my real problem with Starbucks is that there are 314 of them within 5 miles of my zip code. (**Update, 9/1/05: Found out Delocator has some double listings — The actual number of Starbucks looks to be more like 250 or so. **Update, 9/5/05: The double listings have been deleted, but the distance measures are evidently messed up, at least for my zip. The actual number sits somewhere between 60 and 100, per my calculations. See comments for more details.).
That stat comes from Delocator, an anti-chain, pro-indie-biz site that points you towards independent coffee stores near you. According to them, Starbucks’ standardization “is hostile to the historical culture of the café and is dangerous, ultimately, to democratic principles.”
Starbucks is known for its ruthless competition, ousting small, independent cafés by paying higher rents — According to New Consumer mag, the company can open an outlet in 16 weeks and recoup its investment in three years.
With that kind of track record, the “good” things Starbucks does often just looks like greenwashing — And even that’s done half-ass. Fair trade coffee, according to the form letter I got from Starbucks, is supposed to be sold as a coffee of the day on the 20th of each month, or the third Tuesday of every month, according to ePebble. But the Starbucks by USC hasn’t brewed any fair trade in at least a few months.
This talk-and-no-action is nothing new; members of Organic Consumers Association have complained about it before, as has Global Exchange. So I sent Starbucks an email asking about it, and got the same form email back that told me about the policy in the first place, which also claimed this:
Fair Trade coffee, along with any of Starbucks coffees, can be requested at anytime; if need be store Partners will use a french press to brew the coffee.
Yeah? So I stopped at the Starbucks on Pico and Westwood today and asked for a cup of FT. “I don’t think we HAVE any fair trade,” said my barista. I thought she meant she didn’t have any brewed FT, but no — the two of us scanned all the bags of coffee on sale, and no FT could be seen anywhere.
Did I just stop by at an unfortunate time, or is Starbucks lying to me? (**Update, 9/3/05: Academia Nut reports that no FT coffee could be found at her local Starbucks in DeKalb, Indiana, either, on 9/2/05). I’m gonna try sending them a third email — though I may get that form letter a 3rd time — (**Update, 9/4/05: Starbucks sent me a non-form email, and I found a Starbucks that’ll brew me fair trade cofee. More details here.)
I kind of doubt it but maybe they were all sold out because everyone’s been demanding the FT stuff?
Actually, thanks for bringing this to my attention. I had no idea.
[Ps. Thanks for stopping by my blog last week! I'm going to try re-opening again ... I hope you'll come back.:-)]
Comment by Stephanie — August 31, 2005 @ 3:26 pm
BTW, I tagged you for Blog Day …
Comment by Stephanie — August 31, 2005 @ 7:48 pm
314! That’s incredible. I did the same thing and got only two. Another one I’m familiar with closer to downtown actually features a drive-through. Yep, you don’t even have to enter the cafe anymore, much less socialize with anyone else but the sixteen-year-old handing you your coffee and your radio.
Starbucks is a tough case. Look forward to more corporate P.R. bullshit and more stonewalling. Introducing Fair Trade coffee there is akin to trying to organize Wal-Mart workers.
Comment by Fletch — August 31, 2005 @ 8:10 pm
Actually, it looks like the number is somewhere around 250, not 314. I read down the Starbucks list, and noticed that there were a bunch of accidental doubles. So I emailed xtine at Delocator, who got back to me almost immediately — apparantly, because the programming’s a little pedestrian, she has to delete these repeats one listing at a time, which she does, once she’s made aware of them. So she’s cleaning up my zip now. Xtine thinks she should be getting some programming help soon –
Comment by Siel — September 1, 2005 @ 3:00 pm
Even so, a hundred Starbucks in one zip code is a lot. I plugged in “53214″ (Milwaukee’s zip) and only about twenty or so appeared. Nice site, though, to find “real” cafes around town. Incidentally, I was surprised by your link that Starbucks offered Fair Trade coffee at all. I think they can do better than one percent, though. I blogrolled New Consumer’s site to keep up with it.
Comment by Fletch — September 1, 2005 @ 4:17 pm
i wondered about that claim that they’ll brew you fair trade and figured it was bull. i’ve been meaning to test that next time i’m somewhere with independent coffee shops and stuck with starbucks. luckily, i have a cafes with fair trade coffee near my home and office so i haven’t had reason to have to go to a starbucks for years.
Comment by jen — September 3, 2005 @ 12:24 pm
oops, i mean somewhere WITHOUT independent coffee shops!
Comment by jen — September 3, 2005 @ 12:26 pm
I wish I had a fair trade coffee shop near my home. My only fair trade solace is Peet’s at USC — Most Peet’s only serve FT once a month, but this Peet’s has a special contract to offer fair trade as an option every day. I’m now holding office hours there two hours a week :) Maybe I’ll convert some students!
Comment by Siel — September 3, 2005 @ 2:40 pm
Do you mind if I add a link to your blog from mine? You posted a comment on mind this morning, which has led me on a quest for fair trade beer. Thanks! (http://www.perlesdelasegesse.blogspot.com in case you want to look before deciding if you want me to add a link!
Andrea
Comment by Andrea — September 3, 2005 @ 4:57 pm
Hey Andrea — Totally! Let’s link up. Notice how I already sorta linked to you on this post’s update :) Hope all’s well in Illinois — I went to college in Indiana, and can’t say I have much love for the midwest, but I think you and your partner are brave for braving it out there –
Comment by Siel — September 3, 2005 @ 5:05 pm
I don’t doubt the good intentions of Fair Trade coffee advocates, but it is important to segregate intentions from results.
Starbucks has an extremely positive influence on coffee growers:
1. It encourages the production of high quality coffee and pays a premium to growers to get it.
2. It offers long-term contracts to growers to help issolate them from fluctuations in the coffee market. These contracts also enable them to minimize the risk of investing in new crops that take some years to come into full production.
3. It often buys the entire annual crop of growers, reducing their costs of marketing to multiple purchasers, and allowing them to focus their time on producing more great coffee.
3. It educates both consumers and producers about quality coffee.
Farmers, even poor ones, are rational. If they can make more money producing higher quality coffee or other products, they consider those options. The market sends them signals through prices as to how to optimize their profits. For example, if cocoa beans produce higher profits, coffee farmers might move part or all of their production to cocoa beans.
We can’t always know what mix of crops is best for a given farmer, so by creating artifical mechanisms to paternalistically encourage crop diversification by over-paying for coffee, we might not be encouraging the right crops for any given farmer, and the high price we pay for his “fair trade” coffee, may cause him and other farmers to be less inclined to diversify into other crops when the market prices signal them to.
In short, we can try to educate farmers, but whenever we try to tamper with the markets by artificially manipulating prices, we usually end up hurting our target group more than we help.
The surest way to help the poor is to encourage efficient, free, open markets and globalization:
http://fte.org/capitalism/introduction/
Comment by Brian Surkan — September 3, 2005 @ 5:26 pm
I don’t think fair trade advocates would disagree with many of the nice things you said about Starbucks. As I mentioned in a previous post, Starbucks sells a ton of fair trade coffee, even if that comes out to just 1% of their total sales. And on top of some of the positive influences Starbucks has had on coffee growers, Starbucks is generally very good to their employees (though they’re fighting unionization). These and other benefits of Starbucks are being discussed on Reasoner. I’m not saying that Starbucks is “pure evil.”
But that doesn’t make everything Starbucks does okay. If a company says it’ll do something, it should do it, plain and simple. That’s my main complaint here. I also dislike Starbucks’ habit of driving out small, independent cafés that make neighborhoods unique.
I’m a little more perplexed by your opinion about farmers, though. While I may agree that even poor farmers are “rational” (though I’d hope that’s not news to most people), I’m not sure why you think that farmers, once they learn about the precarious nature of the commodities market and the current overabundance of coffee production via the work of fair trade advocates and others, would choose to just grow more coffee. As “rational” people, I would think that many would begin to look toward long term economic success and stability, and consider diversification. Your characterization of coffee farmers portrays them as rather short-sighted and incapable of thinking ahead.
My main point being — Fair trade isn’t just about paying higher prices. It’s also an effort to address present economic inequalities perpetuated by existing trade policies that leave many farmers poor, undereducated, and without the resources (loans, transport, marketing skills, etc.)to get out of the cycle of poverty.
Comment by Siel — September 4, 2005 @ 1:34 pm
One more update on Delocator — Their distance function doesn’t seem to be working correctly. My zip’s turning up listings from Palmdale, which is a good 60 miles from here. The real number of Starbucks within 5 miles of 90035 seems to be somewhere between 60 and 100. Still a lot, but a lot less than the original 314.
I’ve let xtine of Delocator know about the distance glitch. She has, by the way, already gotten rid of the double listings for my zip code.
Comment by Siel — September 5, 2005 @ 12:16 pm
i know you already said a lot of this, but i can’t help commenting on brian’s post…
fair trade is NOT about “overpaying” for commodities, it’s about paying the TRUE value of the commodity rather than a market price that has been artificially lowered because of political exploitation, deferred environmental costs (e.g. the “tragedy of the commons”), and other failures in the “free” market system. because we aren’t living in the perfect world of the hypothetical “free market” — we are living in world of gross disparity in political, economical, and personal power, and that often results in a market cost far below the actual cost of an item. and that’s why supposedly “free” trade is often “unfair” trade.
whereas, fair trade asks: “what is the REAL value of this commodity, in a fair system?” that’s all. it’s not about paternalism or “gifting” producers extra money just for charity’s sake.
without going too deep into a discussion of free markets and the ways in which they can often become “unfair,” i’d like to point out one well-recognized area in which free markets can fail, and that is the recognition that monopolies are bad for the free market. starbuck’s saturation of the market is so thorough that it will soon be having the deleterious effects of monopolization on the market (if it hasn’t already). starbucks isn’t evil, but when presented with a better alternative (such as fair trade coffee served at an independent, locally-owned coffee shop) in my view starbucks is clearly not the preferable choice.
that aside, the original post was not about avoiding starbucks, but about exhorting starbucks to sell fair trade coffee. the benefits brian alleges that starbucks brings to the coffee industry (for instance the buying power to buy an entire year’s crop, maintenance of high quality standards, use of long term contracts) are equally or more applicable to starbucks as a retailer of fair trade coffee. so saying that “starbucks is good” doesn’t negate the fact that “starbucks should sell fair trade coffee.”
Comment by jen — September 6, 2005 @ 7:38 am
Great idea. I visited a starbucks store in Kirkland, WA and the “barista” had no idea what I was talking about. I simply asked for a short latte and wanted to make sure the coffee was “fair trade” He looked at me as if I was a Kerry voter;) and asked that I follow up with the store manager if I had any concerns about the “quality” of the espresso
Comment by Peter L — November 3, 2005 @ 4:26 pm
Hey Peter — Thanks for joining in! Do you remember which store this was? I just did a search and found out there were 8 stores in Kirkland! Have you tried getting a non-espresso fair trade coffee there?
Comment by Siel — November 4, 2005 @ 12:52 am
I would be interested in subscribing to this blogs rss feed but am kinda new to this. Is it possible to get it via email? Leslie in Washington-dc
Comment by Washington Apartment Rentals — February 9, 2006 @ 6:22 am