Wake up and smell the coffee (Episode Four)

Are you wondering what happened once the Chiapas project was implemented? In the first year of the collaboration Starbucks bought two containers -a little less than 35.000 kilogrames- of shade-grown coffee from the cooperatives, at prices significantly higher than the prevailing market price in the area. The company announced the introduction of this new variety in a small news conference, and the executives were surprised when they found out that the press was very interested in their actions.

Last year I attended a talk where the speaker said “If your company is going green, expect cynisism”. Well, this happened when Starbucks made their announcements: people thought that two containers were nothing compared to the thousands of tons the company purchased every year. They kind of had a point… still, it was just the first outcome of the project! However, Starbucks executives heard what their customers thought and decided that in order to show their commitment was significative, the production bought from Chiapas’ farmers had to be way higher.

By 2002, purchases of shade-grown coffee increased to nearly 700.000 kilogrames; the coffee was offered in bags in US stores, and by the end of that same year it would be sold in the stores to be opened in Mexico City. The project in Chiapas resulted in a 40% average increase in farmers’ earnings, and a 100% growth in the cooperatives’ international coffee sales.

Starbucks went one step further after the success with the Chiapas project: based on the expertise they had gained through the process, they developed a set of purchaising guidelines to extend the scope of their actions towards conservation and fair livelihoods for farmers. The concept was to create positive changes within the global coffee community, not by replacing existing supplier realtionships, but by developing sustainable practices throughout the value chain. The principles were designed along with CI, and reviewed by a wide range of nonprofit groups and coffee-system stakeholders.

Under Starbucks’ new system, suppliers of any size or location could earn up to 100 points for performance in three sustainability categories: environmental imacts, social conditions and economic issues. If a supplier met all the criteria, it would become a prefferred supplier and its coffee would have priority in Starbucks’ purchaising queue. A producer’s performance had to be verified by a competent third party.

That’s all the info I wanted you to have… maybe now you can see why I divived it into several episodes! Next will be the last one, and I’ll give a personal point of view on why Starbucks got involved in the Chiapas project. Stay tuned!