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Starbucks Value Chain: From Bean to Cup

Controlling

Once managers have established goals and plans and organized a structure to pursue those goals, the manager’s job isn’t done. Quite the opposite! Managers must now monitor work activities to make sure they’re being done as planned and correct any significant deviations, make adjustments as necessary, and look for new opportunities.

At the heart of Starbucks’s success is its ability to provide customers with a unique product of high quality delivered with exceptional service. Everything that each Starbucks partner does, from top level to bottom level, contributes to the company’s ability to do that efficiently and effectively. Managers need controls in place to help monitor and evaluate what’s being done and how it’s being done. At Starbucks these controls include transactions controls, security controls, employee controls, and organizational performance controls.

A legal recruiter stops by Starbucks on her way to her office in downtown Vancouver and orders her daily tall café mocha. A construction site supervisor pulls into the drive-through line at the Starbucks store in Fort MacMurray for a cinnamon chip scone and Tazo tea. In Montreal it’s 11:00 p.m., and needing a break from studying for her next-day’s management exam, a student heads to the local Starbucks for a tasty caffeinated treat—a Raspberry Pomegranate Starbucks Refresher. Now she’s ready again to tackle that chapter material on managerial controls.

Every week, an average of 60 million transactions take place at a Starbucks store. Measuring and evaluating the efficiency and effectiveness of these transactions for both walk-in customers and customers at drive-through windows is important. As Starbucks added more drive-through windows, the focus of the transaction was on being fast (as well as on quality)—a different metric than for walk-in transactions. For instance, digital timers are placed where employees can easily see them to measure service times; order confirmation screens are used to help keep accuracy rates high; and additional pastry racks have been conveniently located by the drivethrough windows.

Keeping company assets (such as people, equipment, products, financial information, and so forth) safe and secure requires security controls. The company is committed to providing all partners with a clean, safe, and healthy work environment. All partners share the responsibility to follow all safety rules and practices; to cooperate with officials who enforce those rules and practices; to take necessary steps to protect ourselves and other partners; to attend required safety training; and to report immediately all accidents, injuries, and unsafe practices or conditions. Managers receive ongoing training about these issues and are expected to keep employees

Controlling the Coffee Experience

trained and up-to-date on any changes. And at any time, any partner can contact the Partner & Asset Protection Department for information and advice.

One security area that has been particularly important to Starbucks has been with its gift cards.

There are many opportunities for unethical employees to “steal” from the company through the gift card scheme. Detecting such fraud can be difficult because it’s often not apparent from an operations standpoint. However, Starbucks uses transactional data analysis technology to detect multiple card redemptions in a single day and has identified other “telltale” activities that pinpoint possible fraud. Investigators have found individuals at stores who confessed to stealing as much as $42 000. Usually, smaller amounts are noted and the individuals are sent letters asking them to explain. Many employees who have been so “notified” will quit.

Starbucks’s part-time and full-time hourly partners are the primary—and most important— source of contact between the company and the customer. Partners are encouraged to strive to make every customer’s experience pleasant and fulfilling and to treat customers with respect and dignity. Partners are trained in and are required to follow all proper procedures relating to the storage, handling, preparation, and service of Starbucks products. In addition, partners are told to notify their managers immediately if they see anything that suggests a product may pose a danger to the health or safety of themselves or of customers. Partners also are taught the warning signs associated with possible workplace violence and how to reduce their vulnerability if faced with a potentially violent situation. In either circumstance where product or partner safety and security are threatened, store managers have been trained on the appropriate steps to take if such a situation occurs.

The final types of control that are important to Starbucks managers are the organizational performance and financial controls. Starbucks uses the typical financial control measures but also looks at growth in sales at stores open at least one year as a performance standard. One continual challenge is trying to control store operating costs. There’s a fine balance the company must achieve between keeping costs low and keeping quality high. However, there are steps the company has taken to control costs. For instance, new thinner garbage bags were expected to save the company half a million dollars a year.

In addition to the typical financial measures, corporate governance procedures and guidelines are an important part of Starbucks’s financial controls, as they are at any public corporation that’s covered by Sarbanes-Oxley legislation. The company has identified guidelines for its board of directors with respect to responsibilities, processes, procedures, and expectations.

The steaming cup of coffee placed in a customer’s hand at any Starbucks store starts as coffee beans (berries) plucked from fields of coffee plants. From harvest to storage to roasting to retail to cup, Starbucks understands the important role each participant in its value chain plays.

Starbucks offers a selection of coffees from around the world, and its coffee buyers personally travel to the coffee-growing regions of Latin America, Africa/Arabia, and Asia/Pacific in order to select and purchase the highest-quality arabica beans. Once the beans arrive at any one of the five roasting facilities in the United States and three global facilities, Starbucks’s master professional roasters take over. These individuals know coffee and do their “magic” in creating the company’s rich signature roast coffee in a process that brings balance to all of its flavour attributes. There are many potential challenges to “transforming” the raw material into the quality product and experience that customers have come to expect at Starbucks. Weather, shipping and logistics, technology, political instability, and so forth all could potentially impact what Starbucks is in business to do.

 

Discussion Questions:

 

1. What control criteria might be useful to a retail store manager? To a barista at one of Starbucks’s walk-in only retail stores? How about for a store that has a drive-through?

 

2. What “red flags” might indicate significant deviations from standard for (a) an hourly partner; (b) a store manager; (c) a district manager; (d) the executive vice president of finance; and (e) the CEO? Are there any similarities? Why or why not?

 

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