Why Starbucks Must Crush Unions to Survive

Starbucks has been a mainstay in business school literature as a role model for innovation, branding, vertical integration, and corporate social responsibility. The impact of Starbucks is well-known - the company repositioned coffee into a mainstream drink that people consume these days for taste and aesthetics as much as function. Thanks to efforts from its CEO, Howard Schultz, Starbucks has carefully crafted a uniquely respected and celebrated image in academia, business, political, and investment circles. Starbucks is not some basic coffee retailer, but instead a forward-thinking, fast-growing, innovative, socially responsible company that always does the right thing for customers, employees, investors, farmers, and environment.

This makes it especially ironic that Starbucks, the poster child of corporate social responsibility and model employer, is now waging such a high-profile, visible, ugly war with its baristas across the United States - using every trick in and outside the book to crush unions and squash any labor progression efforts before it can form.

While union efforts are also happening at Apple, REI, Walmart, Target, and Amazon, none of these corporations have followed the scorched-earth approach of Starbucks. For a company that makes billions every year selling syrup and microwavables, surely the profits must be high. Can Starbucks really not afford to pay a few more bucks to its retail workers? In this episode, we’ll dive into the business of Starbucks, strip away the corporate marketing, and uncover why the company’s image as a dominant, fast-growing, business depends on successfully crushing unions.

0:00 Nurturing Human Spirit
9:03 The Legend of Howard Schultz
16:43 Dwindling Growth Narratives
22:51 Investors Optics Against Unions Economics

[ModernMBA]

🤔You are Starbuck’s newest CEO. Beyond the unions, you have walked into a difficult situation. The most popular beverages sold these days (iced drinks with flavored syrups) are significantly different from the company’s coffee roots, you have a weak business in Europe that hasn’t performed in over 10 years, and a promising business in China who is still opening slowly. On top of all this, you have a workforce of baristas demanding greater operational simplification and automation, which would potentially hurt store experience and drink quality.

The other conundrum is that the licensing model, which has fueled Starbuck’s expansion over the past two decades, seems to be at its limit. Licensing has been successful in protecting the Starbucks brand and ensuring a consistent store experience around the world - but that control has come at a cost.

The revenue / profits from licensed stores that flow to Starbucks the company are peanuts compared to companies who follow the conventional franchise model. For example, Dunkin’ Donuts enjoys 30-40% operating margins using franchises despite not having anywhere close to the global scale and popularity of Starbucks. Investors are pressuring you to present a vision like your legendary predecessor Howard Schultz.

As the new CEO, what would your growth story be for Starbucks?

[MrMurica]

If Starbucks is already selling overpriced drinks, and has to crush unions just to survive, Starbucks shouldn't succeed as a business

[robertstuckey]

Im skeptical about the claim that everyone joylessly sucked down bad coffee before starbucks came in. The cafe/diner as a meeting place has a long history. What Starbucks did was premiumizatuon.

[kibaanazuka]

Something that isnt mentioned about Europe but noteworthy is that Starbucks entered a market where local coffee chains have a good stronghold and independent coffeehouses are abundant. Europeans also take their local coffee culture seriously whether its Fika in Sweden, Vienna coffee, or the Coffee Bar culture in Italy. That is something hard to penetrate and take over in trying to change local coffee habits. Along with Starbucks is just expensive, like 2-3x more expensive than local coffeehouses from what some European friends have told me. They've basically backed themselves into a corner and seems to only being staying afloat off locations in tourist areas where they get traffic.

[czechmeoutbabe]

The strongest arguments for Starbucks being *exceptional* were always just basic human things: A shared 3rd space for people to chat or work in, Baristas that cared about the customer experience, quality coffee, free Wifi, decent interior design, etc. None of these things requires the company domination on top of it. You could get all of this from a good coffee shop in a Bookstore or Library. I wish the Unions luck in their struggle :)

[thetrainhopper]

I’m in a union and worked in retail, there are reasons for wanting a union other than pay. Stable schedules are one. Your manager having the power to change you schedule at a moments notice is BS. You can’t plan on things from week to week when you don’t have the same schedule. Or if there is a labor or safety violation, unions are better able to handle that than reporting a violation to an underfunded state agency. Unions have their own problems, but you can go the extra mile of the Starbucks Union and be independent. You don’t need to be in the AFL, SEIU or NEA in my case. You can be independent and do what you want. Which is serve members.

[pierrex]

Surprising to me that Starbucks still paints itself as growing, innovative or edgy, or anything other than commoditized F&B.
And health wise, how long until the soda tax spills into these Starbucks "drinks" that have more calories than you can count?

[MarcDoughty]

As someone who grew up watching Starbucks come in and crush local coffee shops with their overpriced swill and brutal corporate tactics, this video had me cry-laughing.

[UseMousse]

One might argue that if Starbucks isn't able to provide adequate pay and working conditions, which is then leading to workers looking to unionise, Starbucks business model is flawed and they shouldn't survive, especially if the only way they can is by exploiting workers.

[TheDirtestHippy]

I work in a Starbucks in Hawaii. I get $16.25 before taxes. I'd say the average price of a drink we sell over here is about $6-7 and food included its often about $10-15ish per person. We often clear around 10-13kish in revenue every day and this is considered low compared to what we were doing per-COVID. One apsect of unions negotiations which I feel were not adequately brought up were guaranteed hours. Living in Hawaii the cost of living is quite exorbitant. Despite me pestering my boss for more hours constantly, I'm averaging about 30 to 25 hours a week. Nobody on my store's schedule is full time except my manager and the average amount of hours between the 20ish partners at my store are about 20-24 hours a week. For a store that's consistently bringing in about 13k a day you'd figure we'd be able to afford more hours for our partners, but corporate continues to cut hours and our manager is constantly understaffing because as she descibes it "we are not earning enough to justify our hours". Higher wages would be nice but at this point I'd be happy with just being guaranteed enough hours to pay my rent and buy groceries. Overall working for Starbucks isn't bad but I can never see myself making a career out of this and I pray for anyone who attempts to do so.

[SumRndmPenguin]

I think it's more of a "chasing infinite growth" problem then survival problem. They clearly can make money while obliging to union demands, so it's not like they'll die if they do. The problem is that they won't make more money year over year, and I guess that's all that matters.

[twerkingfish]

I never understood the immense draw of Starbucks, and places like it, because drinking a coffee milkshake every day seems to unhealthy to ever justify, and if I want black coffee, I’ll make it at home for 20 cents a cup rather than have it at Starbucks for $4 a cup.

I just get my slave produced coffee the boring way.

[bisiilki]

As an Australian I am proud that we hate Starbucks

[elisewilkinson]

I very recently quit Starbucks after being a supervisor at corporate owned stores for 4 1/2 years and a barista at a licensed store for 2 years. This video really perfectly illustrated how all they care about are ever growing profits and higher and higher margins. What people seem to forget is the human aspect of it all. Tell me, how is someone supposed to pay rent earning $15/hr with an unpredictable schedule? You get hired as "full time" and are expected to have full availability but one week you might get lucky to get 35hrs and the next 30. It might not sound like that dramatic of a difference but 5hrs of pay can be the difference between paying the phone bill or buying groceries. Many people rely on working multiple jobs and having roommates just to get by. Even getting a second job can be a difficult game to play because then you have to change your availability and risk loosing even more hours. Does $20/hr sound like a lot? Of course. But when you take into account the ever rising cost of housing it should be a no brainer that wages go up as well. As a supervisor at Starbucks, it drove me crazy seeing week after week our record breaking sales while also being told we just couldn't afford more labor. It's a function of capitalism to squeeze as much production out of workers for as little cost as possible just to chase growing margins for the people at the top while the ones actually working struggle to survive.

[ericp]

The best thing people can do is to buy from (small) local coffee shops and make coffee from home.

[kingofthegrill]

By the way, you know it's a grift when they start talking about all these vague, massive, indefinable causes. "There are millions of children in Africa who can't even afford basic medicine or a visit to the doctor... and Starbucks is going to vaguely try to make that better, somehow, we promise." Not "we need to help our local community", not "we need to focus on small-scale issues we can tackle", not "let's help some of our displaced and homeless veterans who were abandoned by the VA and their families", no no, it's "Africa", it's the "starving children in Africa". The person who wrote that probably couldn't name a single country in Africa but it's fine, it's totally not a grift guys, they're gonna do it. That's why African kids aren't starving anymore, Starbucks sent them sugary drinks and cheap pastries and now they're all full and healthy. Oh wait, shit...

[joshserna]

Infinite growth is not possible, yet it’s treated like the norm. It’s time to unionize

[carlcarlington]

People will simultaneously evangelize about how great our economic system is while simultaneously describing it as what can only honestly be seen as a hostage situation. “If you cut into our profits by asking for a higher standard of living we will leave you unemployed, we will stop building housing, we will stop providing healthcare” threatens a group of people completely unaccountable to anyone or thing. It can only be described as an abusive situation for the fast majority of people who do the work these people profit off of.

[gvozdenkuronja]

So they can't pay their workers their worth because they're spending that money on corporate social responsibility?!

[kk-crdb]

Also just a fun fact, Starbucks in Poland charges basically exactly the same prices as in USA, despite the wages being much lower (and also most products being much cheaper). So you're paying like 3-4 dollas equivalent, but when you compare it to wages it's like they would charge 20 dollars. And people still buy it. Its crazy. They made coffee into a luxury and unfortunately other coffee shops also charge crazy now, because Starbucks set the tone for coffee in the city being a crazy expensive item.