On my very first trip as Starbucks’ coffee buyer to Guatemala in the mid 1980s I was inspired by the beauty of the country and the great coffee on the one hand, but overwhelmed by the poverty and the environmental challenges on the other. I came home to Seattle with very mixed feelings. Then in 1991, we made a key decision to work in parallel with coffee traders to the benefit of communities in coffee-growing countries.
How did CSR develop at Starbucks after this initial interest?
In 1994, an organisation in the US – the US/Guatemala Labor Education Project – began to focus their attention on Starbucks just as we were looking at overseas working conditions. In 1995, the company published a Framework for a Code of Conduct, describing Starbucks’ approach to improving living and working conditions in coffee growing regions. Through this framework, Starbucks articulated better and communicated more regularly what we cared about and what we were doing about what we cared about. That became a cycle of about every six months – reporting on progress and reviewing the issues and committing to future efforts.
You must have been one of the first companies to start reporting on CSR.
We may have been. I remember speaking at a special coffee conference in Venice in October 1995 to a group of coffee industry people. I knew they spoke English, but they weren’t having a very good time understanding what I was talking about! That move into more transparency makes a lot of people nervous. What we expressed in 1995 was a commitment to the quality of coffee, the quality of the environment in which it is grown and the quality of the lives of people involved in the production. And that’s a pretty long reach.
Would it be true to say that Starbucks’ approach is very much about partnership with the people in these coffee-growing regions?
I remember when we were writing our guiding principle, saying that those communities at the other end of the coffee chain are as much our communities as the communities around our coffee stores. There was no discussion about this, or argument, just a broad realisation that I was right. That leads us to partnering in the more literal sense, with organisations like CARE and like Conservation International.
Why doesn’t Starbucks sell 100% Fairtrade coffee in its stores?
Fairtrade is not the only solution. It is not well understood and how small that initiative is when compared to the overall coffee market. We were engaged in practices such as C.A.F.E (Coffee And Farmer Equity) before there was even a Fairtrade mark. We were already in the game before they came along and had developed, to a very sophisticated level, ethical purchasing practices.
A lot of coffee shops in the UK are becoming 100% Fairtrade now, take Marks & Spencer for instance. Where does this leave Starbucks?
You know if I were Marks & Spencer that’s probably what I would do. But I’m Starbucks and we have a long history of relationships with a broad range of suppliers, relationships in a wide range of countries, some of which don’t even operate fair trade and they’re all benefiting from Starbucks’ purchasing efforts, in places where there is no such thing as fair trade. So we’re aligned 100% with what they [Fairtrade] does, but their focus is very narrow – on small producers organised into co-ops to become Fairtrade certified.
What is your response to people who accuse Starbucks of harming diversity in neighbourhoods? I am thinking of the campaign in Primrose Hill, North London, a few years ago where residents prevented Starbucks establishing a new store.
A lot has been said about this. We could run the whole works and put a different name on each store. But the reality is, I’ve been to a lot of stores and I can tell you the personality of different stores is driven by who’s behind the counter [pointing to a picture of Harold, the Great Portland Street store manager, on the wall]. If everything that was said about Starbucks were true there would be no one here. I understand people’s concern; I have share similar concerns myself. I can assure you we are doing everything we possibly can to grow this company in a responsible way and in a way that’s responsive to our communities.
Is CSR a response to all the anti-Starbucks campaigns?
For one thing, the CSR efforts across the board pre-date many of that anyway. One benefit that we are very aware of is the positive association that customers get as a result of the efforts we undertake. But that’s not why we get involved in the coffee-growing world. We do that as a pure expression of our own values, amplified by the business need to make sure we have the relationships that give us the quality [of coffee]. It’s one of the ways, after all, the attract quality employees.
There seems to be a very flat hierarchy at Starbucks – even your job title is written in lower case. Why is this?
People can just pick up the phone and speak to me – it seems to surprise them, but it doesn’t surprise me. And when I refer to ‘partners’ here, I’m talking about employees. I’ve had a lot of roles in the company, so I’m at least conversant with the people who call me.
Dave Olsen is senior vice president, Culture and Leadership Development. He is currently responsible for sharing Starbucks’ values and guiding principles with new executives, employees and international members of the Starbucks team. Olsen is actively involved in the Seattle Initiative for Global Development, composed of community business leaders focused on the importance of poverty alleviation and international development. He serves on the boards of CARE USA, CARE International, The Pike Place Market Foundation and The Starbucks Foundation, and is a member of the Visiting Committee for the Evans School of Public Affairs at the University of Washington. Olsen began his career in coffee in 1975 by opening Cafe, now a Seattle landmark.
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