… even when they try to school you about Starbucks policies without bothering to read how much you already know about them. Here’s an email one kaylah sent to me and City Hippy — we worked on the Starbucks Challenge together — a couple days ago:
Listen Here girls. I am a partner at Starbucks Coffee Company. I work constantly and I know for a fact that if you come in and ASK FOR ANY COFFEE WE DON’T HAVE ON WE WILL MAKE YOU A BODUM ( a coffee press) of what you do like. We try to encourage the three coffee of the days that we have on but if a customer really wants another kind of coffee LIKE A FAIR TRADE COFFEE we will make it for them in a press.
Here’s my response:
Listen here kaylah — City Hippy’s not a girl. He’s a man named Al. I, however, am a girl — Hello!
Anyway — Thanks for writing. We are well aware that Starbucks’ corporate policy is to French press any coffee that customers ask for, whether or not it’s brewing. The problem we’ve been trying to point out is that this French press policy is often unknown to many baristas, and thus difficult for customers to take advantage of.
I’m guessing you didn’t read very far into the Starbucks Challenge before sending us this email — which is fine, because we know Starbucks partners are busy. But rest assured that we’re not making rash, uneducated assumptions about the way Starbucks’ policies are carried out on the store-level.
In fact, I personally visited 2 different Starbucks a couple days ago — and the baristas I encountered at both stores had never heard of the French press policy. Here’s a brief summary of what happened:
I hope that one day, at least a majority of Starbucks baristas will be as informed of corporate policies as you appear to be :)
Again, I’d like to point out that in general, Starbucks baristas are v. nice, and will check with their manager to see if it’s ok to make a French press. However, in general, Starbucks baristas have no clue that a French press policy exists… And in some cases, they’ll be pretty insistent on NOT making you a French press, even when you ask for one specifically.
Update, 12/24/06: A brilliant riposte from kaylah, emailed to me on xmas eve:
dont pull that polite stuff. you guys are lying. your trying to expose how many people dont know about this.. like i said were learning. do you not have a job? get ajob.. and a life instead of trying to figure out how many baristas know about the policy. i cant believe someone would spend their time doing that. find something to do for christ sakes.
My response:
Ha ha — “get a job” is a funny one from a gal who spends her time reading about the Starbucks Challenge and sending me email diatribes — not that I mind, because I love it when people take an interest in my writing :)
Yes, we are trying to show how Starbucks policies aren’t carried out on the store level — We never lied about that. But we’re trying to emphasize that this is not a fault of the baristas, but a fault of the higher-ups at Starbucks for not emphasizing this issue while telling customers it’s an avaliable option (which leads to grief both for the customer who requests it and the barista who hasn’t been told about it).
Thanks for the entertainment :)
Hahaha…that is like the fifth person who assumed I was a girl…am I missing something? Hahaha…
Namaste
Al
Comment by Al Tepper — December 22, 2006 @ 12:37 pm
Maybe I should be embarrassed to admit this, but I, too, kinda guessed you were a girl. Maybe its an assumption that a woman would be more likely to give themself a name like “city hippie”. Go figure.
But, with all this having been said, I wonder if it influences how people perceive your stuff.
Comment by Rodney North — December 22, 2006 @ 5:26 pm
My own experience with the Challenge can’t be neatly categorized as “the baristas don’t know about the policy” or “they are well-informed about it.” I think that it’s very location-specific and appears to hinge on whether the store manager educates his/her employees on it.
A manager of a Starbucks location probably feels that it’s a best practice if no one asks for the french press option. This is perhaps so because much of the barista’s work has been de-skilled and routinized. A french pressed coffee is, after all, a customized product in that most SBux customers will opt for whatever the daily blend happens to be.
If Starbucks corporate is really serious about this option and fair trade promotion in general, they need to emphasize it at the store manager level. Baristas do what they’re told whereas their boss can ignore or hide what the higher-ups want done. Incidentally, sorry Al, I mistakenly thought you were female as well. Thanks for getting this started along with GreenLAGirl.
Comment by Fletch — December 22, 2006 @ 6:27 pm
as a long time SB partner, i grew up with the policy and made it live in my store.
as a long time activist, and reader of the site – i made it doubly important to live in my store and communicated it with my DM, so they could help it live inour district…
rude baristas aside, the problem is that the learning process is so long, and slow. and while the good customers care about coffee, and the better ones about coffee buying practices, i’m hard pressed to find more than a handful in many places.
the majority of our customers care about quality service, clean environments, fast service. the knowledge and coffee mastery is a very far second to all of that.
and when you factor in turnover rates – with the lowest unemployment (at least in my city) in years, it gets harder to ensure that people are able to learn more than the basics.
but keep up the challenge. i enjoy reading when we get it right. keep pushing starbucks to make themselves better – it has helped and will only continue to make us better.
but be forewarned: if you keep challenging us and we rise to it – then you become responsible for us being better, and bigger. :)
Comment by silver — December 30, 2006 @ 5:54 pm
You’re the cutest, silver :) Kudos to you for working internally to make sure Starbucks lives up to its word :) I too get pretty psyched whenever the interaction with baristas is stress free :)
One thing I’ve learned with writing about the Starbucks Challenge is that — just as baristas might need a reminder now and then about what the French press policy is — activists too often need a reminder to always be nice, even if one runs into the occasional rude barista. After all, the challenge is about Starbucks’ policies as a company, not about individual baristas, nice or not. It’s a tough job, serving a long line of cranky, caffeine-deprived people –
Comment by Siel — December 30, 2006 @ 6:26 pm