Customer : Reviewed

Questions About Licensed Stores

Kerry B — Wed, 03 Jun 2009 00:14:00 GMT

Hi, this is Kerry Busheikin, vice president of Operations for Licensed Stores East. There have been a lot of great questions lately about licensed stores. I wanted to take this opportunity to share some information about why we license and the benefits it provides our customers and I’ll address some of the questions asked.

A Starbucks licensed store is owned and operated by an approved licensee. Each licensee is closely evaluated to ensure they meet our stringent requirements in order to operate the Starbucks brand. These retail locations are staffed by the licensee’s employees and they follow Starbucks training guidelines including beverage quality, store cleanliness, and creating the Starbucks Experience for our customers.

Our customers consistently tell us “convenience” ranks as one of the most important motivations to visit our locations. A licensed store provides Starbucks access to many locations that we would not have otherwise. For example, hospitals, colleges, airports and grocery stores are locations our customers tell us they want us to be in so they can purchase their favorite drink. Through these locations, we are able to significantly increase customer accessibility to our products and brand, which, from a shareholder perspective, is also valuable because of the profit it contributes to the organization.

Licensed store baristas receive training and support similar to our company owned stores. Our licensed store community works very hard to deliver the same legendary service that customers expect from every Starbucks store. Our shared goal is to have a seamless experience including quality of beverage, friendly service and convenient locations which is why we proudly represent the Starbucks brand. There are very few occasions when a licensed store is not able to participate in a Starbucks program. For example, most locations accept the Starbucks Card, but some do not have the operating system to accommodate the technology. We continue to work diligently to ensure that these types of exceptions are kept to a minimum and look for solutions to the existing exceptions.

Thank you for your questions and please keep them coming!

All Starbucks Should Be Starbucks
posted by carma

Coffee Ice Cubes

Mark Lancaster — Tue, 19 Aug 2008 21:04:00 GMT

Hi Everyone! I’m Mark from the beverage team here at Starbucks. On the beverage team we strive to continually create innovative beverages; for this reason I love the coffee ice cubes idea! The idea initiated an interesting dialogue between customers and Partners (employees) surrounding our iced coffee, our iced tea, and the countless variations of your favorite Starbucks beverage. Amazing!

While I personally love this idea, and it works great at home (I’ve tried it!), at this time we are unable to carry out the coffee ice cubes idea because only a small percentage of our retail stores have freezers. So for now, keep up the great ideas and continue to enjoy coffee ice cubes at home! I recommend making coffee ice cubes using our Starbucks™ Gazebo Blend!

Regards,

sbx_esp

Penny for PKD

MSI Team — Wed, 16 Jul 2008 19:33:00 GMT

Thank you for taking the time to comment and vote on My Starbucks Idea for Starbucks to consider “Penny for PKD.” We’ve taken some time to review the comments you’ve made and have had many conversations around this idea. Early on in the commenting and voting, our Idea Partners chimed in and shared Starbucks community investments focus areas which include young social entrepreneurs, social investments in coffee, tea and cocoa communities; and helping children get clean water through the Ethos Water Fund.

As you can probably imagine Starbucks receives thousands of requests for so many worthy causes and we wish we could support all of them, but we are continually challenged to stay focused. There are many disease-related causes, such as PKD, that our customers and partners (employees) are personally involved with and passionate about because they themselves or a family member are unfortunately affected. This makes it extremely difficult for us because we do not want to select specific disease related causes to promote at a company level and exclude so many others. Many of you also commented on the rotating disease-related charities idea, but again we are trying to remain true to our focus areas and would also exclude so many worthy disease-related causes that our partner and customers are passionate about and personally affected by.

We do support some disease related organizations through our partner (employee) giving programs. One of these programs is called Make Your Mark and it provides $10 for every hour that the partner (employee) volunteers with the organization. If an employee is passionate about supporting *** cancer research, they can volunteer with a *** care related nonprofit organization and $10 for every hour they volunteer will go to the *** care research nonprofit organization. Some disease related organizations have also been supported at more a regional or local level.

We do encourage you to create some action around PKD in an online community we created called V2V, http://www.v2v.net/starbucks. We mentioned this a couple weeks ago on My Starbucks Idea and some of you have already checked this out. This online network allows you to connect with people who are interested in a specific issue within your specific community. We encourage you to also use this tool to create involvement opportunities and get the word out about PKD or whatever cause you are interested in.

We are very proud of all of our Starbucks employees and especially proud of what Sandie did for one of our customers who was suffering from PKD. We shared Sandie’s story at the Starbucks annual shareholder meeting this last spring and she continues to work for Starbucks and see the customer she donated the kidney to almost every day. Thanks again to all of you who commented on this idea! We appreciate your thoughts and voting around a Penny for PKD! My Starbucks Idea is all about sharing your ideas and creating conversation about ideas that are important to you.