Star Bucks

Business Insights

Turnover: $3.57bn

Core Service: Catering, retail

Profile: Starbucks purchases and roasts whole bean coffees and sells them along with fresh, rich-brewed, Italian style espresso beverages, a variety of pastries and confections, and coffee-related accessories and equipment -- primarily through its company-operated retail stores. In addition to sales through its company-operated retail stores, Starbucks sells primarily whole bean coffees through a specialty sales group, a direct response business, supermarkets, and online at Starbucks.com..

Vision: "Establish Starbucks as the premier purveyor of the finest coffee in the world while maintaining our uncompromising principles while we grow"

Objectives: The Company's objective is to establish Starbucks as the most recognized and respected brand in the world

Strategy: To achieve this goal, the Company plans to continue to rapidly expand its retail operations, grow its specialty sales and other operations, and selectively pursue opportunities to leverage the Starbucks brand through the introduction of new products and the development of new distribution channels.

Corporate Social Responsibility / Sustainable Development Insights

Starbucks' approach to CSR and its business strategy is tied in with reputation and risk management. With a growing empire of over 5,000 coffee outlets across the globe, Starbucks became a favourite targets of anti-globalisation and anti capitalist protestors along with Nike and McDonalds.

Its response to this risk to its reputation was through the CSR agenda and it put in place the following measures to try and earn a licence to operate from its key stakeholders.

In response to this growing concern Starbucks announced in late 2001 that it will pay a premium for beans grown on environmentally and socially responsible farms which the company hopes will "create positive changes within the global coffee market and ultimately result in a fully sustainable coffee production supply chain." Its new purchasing philosophy developed with the Centre of Environmental Leadership in Business, a division of Conservation International will be piloted for two years. Its objective is not to replace existing supplier relationships but rather to enlists current suppliers.

The sourcing guidelines are based on a flexible point system that reward performance in sustainable categories - quality, environmental impacts, social conditions and Economic issues, covering issues such as energy and water conservation, pesticide