My love / hate relationship with Starbucks...

I must confess, I love Starbucks coffee.  Ever since my first sip of it 12 years ago, I've been in love.  I've been a loyal customer for years.  I love the atmosphere of their stores as well as their coffee. I've been one to defend them when friends would refer to them as "Charbucks" or when people would question paying that much for a cup of coffee.

However, over these past couple of years my perspective has changed.  And now, this once loyal customer has been trying to avoid buying coffee there for a few months.  I've had a couple of meetings that happened there for the sake of convenience, however over all I have bypassed Starbucks for these past few months.  It got to the point for me that I was conflicted by their business practices, especially their lack of fair trade coffee.  

After having watched Black Gold and experienced first hand the poverty of Ethiopia, I decided that I no longer wanted to support a company that was not doing its part to help farmers by purchasing fair trade certified coffees that were ensuring the farmers could support themselves.   I was conflicted to think that farmers in Hanna's region who raise coffee on the side, yet live off of less than $250 per year were not being paid more for the hard work that they put into growing coffee, which we were consuming at $2.00 to $4.00 per cup.   

This was further accented to me by Starbucks involvement in humanitarian causes.   Take Ethos water for instance.  Its a great idea - give a portion of the profits off a bottle of water to help someone in the third world.  Think of the millions of people throughout the world without clean water, yet we think nothing of dropping some serious coin for a bottle of water.   I love the concept, however last I heard Starbucks was donating 5 cents for every bottle it sold.  Now, that bottle of water was probably close to $2, yet the best they can do is donate 5 cents?  I find the same confliction in the new Red campaign.  Starbucks is donating 5 cents of every premium Red beverage to help fight Aids in Africa.  Its a great concept, but 5 cents of a $4.00 latte does not seem super generous to me.   That's about 1 percent of the purchase price.  It is better than nothing, but it seems so small.

In all of this, I was glad to read a recent article stating that Starbucks is looking to expand their fair trade line and it was also reported that Starbucks paid an average $1.42/pound for green coffee, which is above average.  That report is available at http://www.tradingmarkets.com/.site/news/Stock%20News/1975433/ .  I find that very promising.  I don't want to be too hard on Starbucks, after all they are a business and they are trying to make money.  I guess I'm more concerned with how their image at times has been that they are very ethical and fair, but that image does not always seem to have matched reality.   To be fairto Starbucks, I have heard from a few folks that work there that they have felt well cared for as employees.  Its good to hear about those standards.

About 5 years ago we began to look at the coffee that we were serving at church.   At the time we were serving Starbucks, but we then heard about a company called Pura Vida.   Their coffees are fair trade, shade grown and organic.   As I started to research them I couldn't believe what I found.   Their mission is "to Create Good by using business to empower producers, motivate consumers, inspire business leaders, and, ultimately, serve the poor. By utilizing every facet of our company—capital structure, governance, employee recruitment, product sourcing, marketing and sales—to achieve social outcomes, we can demonstrate that the worlds of business and charity can not only co-exist, but can thrive on one another."  

A business whose focus is serving the poor and "creating good."   They have been focused on paying farmers better wages - they paid on average more than $1.60 per pound for coffee - caring for the environment in which the coffee is grown, and reinvesting their profits back into the villages where their farmers live.   They have projects in Guatamala, Peru, Costa Rica, Nicaragua and Ethiopia.  Many of their projects are focused on helping children.  The project in Ethiopia provided a lot of aid in the form of emergency food.  This is a business with a cause much greater than making money - it is truly to see God's Kingdom move forward. 

I love the idea.  A company that is not driven by Wall Street needing to make money, but rather a company that is driven by a mission to serve the poor, start missions, plant churches and see cups of coffee that we purchase here really help to create good for someone else in the world.   A business model that pushes back against meaningless consumerism and corporate greed.   I love it.   It is because my money can help support business models like these, that Starbucks is getting virtually no business from me any longer.  Our choices have real impacts...may our choices help make life better for someone somewhere by "creating good."

If you'd like more info about Pura Vida, check them out at www.puravidacoffee.com .  They are present on tons of college campuses, you can order coffee directly from them...or if you stop by the Vineyard this Sunday you can enjoy a cup on us!