Starbucks Meets Its 'Challenge'

It's axiomatic in today's hypercaffeinated online world of blogs, chat rooms, and Web sites that consumers hold the power. Their rants and raves can make or break everything from TV shows to tech toys to travel destinations -- all in a matter of days. Some companies wilt under such scrutiny, or at least get defensive, sounding more like a beleaguered White House press secretary than a company seeking to earn the trust and goodwill of its customers.

Starbucks has demonstrated that being in the cyberworld hot seat doesn't necessarily require turning on the P.R. fire hose. Sometimes, all it takes is a little low-tech communication.

That's my takeaway from watching the company's response to the recent "Starbucks Challenge" set out by a 26-year-old University of Southern California grad student who goes simply by the name Siel. Last week, her blog, GreenLAGirl, asked readers around the world to hold Starbucks accountable to its policy of making Fair Trade coffee available in all of its stores every day.

For the uninitiated, Fair Trade coffee is that which meets stringent international conditions, including paying a minimum price per pound of coffee to farmers, and providing them much-needed credit and technical assistance, such as helping them transition to organic farming. Fair Trade aims to eliminate what Global Exchange calls "sweatshops in the fields," where small coffee farmers receive prices for their coffee that are less than the costs of production, forcing them into a cycle of poverty and debt.

Starbucks has ramped up its purchases of Fair Trade coffee over the past few years, largely in response to customer and activist demands. Today, the company is one of the largest purchasers of Fair Trade coffee in the world. In fiscal 2004, Starbucks purchased 4.8 million pounds of Fair Trade coffee, and in fiscal 2005 it has committed to more than doubling that.

According to its own stated policy, Starbucks will make a cup of Fair Trade coffee for you, any day of the week, in 21 countries: Australia, Austria, Canada, China, France, Germany, Greece, Hong Kong, Indonesia, Japan, Korea, Malaysia, New Zealand, the Philippines, Singapore, Spain, Switzerland, Taiwan, Thailand, the U.K., and the U.S. If it isn't brewing Fair Trade as one of its "coffees of the day," a Starbucks barista is supposed to, upon request, make a pot using one of those French press plunger devices.

Given that policy, wondered Siel, "just how easy is it to get a Fair Trade cup of coffee in a Starbucks in one of those countries?"

Her "Challenge" caught a viral wave: In just over a week, a couple dozen or so other blogs and Web sites promoted the Challenge, asking readers to check out their local Starbucks, order a cup of Fair Trade java, and record and report their experiences. (Click here to read the full complement of blog reports on the Starbucks Challenge.)

So, how did Starbucks respond to all this high-tech networking?

Simple: It picked up the phone.

Starbucks' Cindy Hoots contacted Siel to talk coffee and to learn what the Starbucks Challenge was revealing. Their friendly, wide-ranging conversation covered Fair Trade coffee, Starbucks' other socially responsible coffee-related initiatives, Siel's Challenge, and life in general. As Siel, who studies literature and creative writing at USC, subsequently blogged:

Cindy's sweet. At the end of our chat today, we started talking about ourselves. She's a theatre major who once "wanted to change the world through art." Now she's older and money-wiser, and works within a different medium -- Starbucks' Corporate Social Responsibility department.

"I honestly think it's cool," Cindy said about the Starbucks Challenge. And she said that, once we finish tabulating the results and stuff, she'd love to follow up with us.

Siel wasn't entirely convinced, however. "I really got the impression that Cindy really cared a lot personally and wanted to work from within," she told me this week. "But I wasn't as sure, aside from giving me some additional information about Starbucks' policy, how connected she was to the actual practices of the company. I'm sure she was motivated by the same concerns as I am. I'm just not sure how much Cindy's caring attitude about this will get translated into the actions of the company as a whole."

Among Siel's concerns: Despite Starbucks' commitment to follow up with managers at the stores that weren't complying (according to the Starbucks Challengers, at least), she wondered whether the company's efforts would extend chain-wide, to include stores her Challengers didn't visit.

Now, all of this may seem a tempest in a coffeepot -- after all, at its essence the question being examined by the Challenge is whether Starbucks is being perfect or merely admirable. But the lesson here isn't about Fair Trade, or even about corporate responsibility. It's about companies engaging, or even embracing, their critics and skeptics to fully understand their concerns and help them understand the company's. It's about the power of personal, one-on-one communication in a world in which all too often public relations is reduced to digital transmissions, however creatively produced and disseminated.

Reaching out doesn't always work. But I've seen precious few cases where such engagement did more harm than good.

Peter Tremblay, Starbucks' director of public affairs, believes his company is better off for having been Challenged. "We don't mind," he told me recently. "We want to learn. We want to try to do the best we can. The Starbucks Challenge -- we want to be partners with them. It helps us figure out where we have opportunities to improve. The Fair Trade movement and Starbucks have common goals."

And Siel, for all of her healthy skepticism, continues her dialogue with Cindy from CSR. "I don't think they're the evil empire by any means," she says of Starbucks. "I just think that if they claim to be doing something, they need to be doing it."

And with a little prodding from the blogosphere, they are.

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