Starbucks serves 40,000,000 people a week. They will open 18,000 new stores in 2006, 5 new stores a day, hiring 300 new employes a week. One third of those stores opened in 2006 will be international. They are currently in 37 countries, even Jordan. A $10,000 investment in Starbucks stock at its IPO would now be worth $650,000. It is amazing what you can do with really good coffee, served with social responsibility.
posted by Bob Booth at 9:30 PM
7 Comments:
You know, Bob, I struggle with Starbucks! Free-trade coffee is a wonderful thing, but for basically 5 cups of coffee there, you could feed a child for a month. That, to me, is social responsibility. Hmm...program idea for next year! Give up coffee for a month, and give the money that you would have spent on that to Africa! Haha. Africa is always the answer to all of my problems.
Yeah, I struggle with always putting my money where my mouth is. That turned out way more literal than I had planned. I am in on the Africa program. Maybe you should change your name to Africa
does starbucks offer all free trade coffee? when we were in oregon we went to a fair trade seminar at willamete university and they said that starbucks only offers one free trade cup of coffee and you have to ask for it. i have just started drinking coffee again so i havent had a chance to try it yet. one of the more interesting things they said was how bad the giant chocolate companies were. the woman i talked to nearly broke down crying when she was talking about what children go through to get this chocolate. they are maimed, beaten, worked literally to death. after hearing about it i cant eat big company chocolate anymore. im glad youre talking about this bob because it can be easy to lose focus and we need to start thinking about what our purchases mean to our brothers and sisters half way around the world. man sorry for the long post its been awhile since weve gotten to talk.
ps. i am totally for for the starbucks idea!
in clarifying the comment about asking for the fair trade coffee. you have to ask for any coffee, but in some stores the fair trade brand is not even listed. and instead of seminar...ill use the word forum...sounds much hipper.
I know they have fair-trade whole beans that they sell, but I guess I just assumed that all their coffee was fair trade since they brag about it so much. I think I need to do some investigating . . . I can't drink blood coffee. I'd like to know more about the chocolate too.
yah its pretty frightening once you start realizing what happens to actual people to save you a little money. im not 100% sure on the starbucks thing so i believe some research is in order.
I really think we should put pictures of starving children next to the cash registers at all the local coffee shops in America. What do you think, will it do any good?
Post a Comment
<< Home