The PROBLEM With Starbucks Coffee

love them or hate them there is no denying that the Starbucks Coffee Brand wields a ton of influence over modern Coffee Culture the brand has basically become a symbol of everything we expect from our coffee experience Ambiance Comfort free Wi-Fi and an insane number of ever-changing and endlessly customizable drink options and of course A Creative take on the spelling of our name scrawled on the side of a cup it's for Jesse awesome order coming up for Josh but similar to the corporate attempt at personalization by getting your name written on a cup every time you enter a store there is another idea that Starbucks had that has fallen short and sadly it's the coffee [Music] now Starbucks is the largest coffee chain in the world and with that status comes many opinions about the quality of their coffee for a lot of people Starbucks is seen as the monolith of coffee to be avoided at all costs but for the millions of people who make their Starbucks commute every morning it's probably their favorite coffee ever much of our opinions on a cup of coffee has less to do with the flavor of the coffee itself but the context in which we drink it and Starbucks knows this in fact Starbucks very intentionally avoids marketing the coffee flavor itself as their former Chief of marketing once put it we're not going to get sucked into the my coffee is better than your coffee conversation we're going to play at a much higher level they're not about selling coffee per se but rather a quote Transcendent experience they pretty much invented that third place coffee shop experience somewhere between work and home where you feel comfortable just hang hanging out and reading a book maybe getting some work done the amount of research and effort that they put into this endeavor is actually kind of crazy from the shape of their tables ground so you don't feel lonely sitting by yourself to how they treat their employees quite well by retail standards so they aren't overworked miserable jerks when they take your order to wielding artificial intelligence to quote increase personalization in every Service delivery which sounds ominous and a little metaverse for me the whole point of all of this is to create a friendly and welcoming environment that Fosters a sense of community and belonging while still being corporate enough to appeal to literally any person on Earth and other than getting your name wrong every time that you go in there they do a pretty decent job at this and this is all lovely and frankly just impressive except for the fact that pretty much every new hip coffee shop provides a similar experience now all the while totally outshining Starbucks on the quality of coffee front the fun fundamental difference between a Starbucks coffee and newer cooler coffee brands is how that coffee is sourced and how it is roasted now this is probably not earth-shattering news for anyone but coffee is the most highly traded agricultural commodity on the planet with America alone consuming 146 billion cups of coffee every single year and they're not even the biggest coffee drinkers around yeah we're looking at you Finland with your eight cups of coffee you caffeinated son of a come on out of why where did that come from from Growers to Roasters to Brewers 125 million people around the world depend on this plant for their livelihood wow the rest of us depend on it for our daily sanity to say that it is an important industry with huge ramifications for our planet and worldwide communities would be a massive understatement which is one of the reasons why coffee has become such a critical talking point when it comes to matters of ethical trade at this point we pretty much all know how exploitative and problematic this industry can be with many coffee Farmers living in poverty or even slave-like conditions and as people have learned about these things they've risen up and demanded better conditions for our Java suppliers now over the past few decades interest in Fair Trade coffee has grown to such an extent that it's almost necessary for companies to show off their eco-cadential credits or should I say their benevolence I don't feel good about out that one that felt dirty I'm I'm not a dad yet come on now people want to know that they're not destroying other people's lives by continuing their coffee dependency so coffee companies like Starbucks started adopting labels like fair trade to put their customers at ease now what is fair trade you might be asking the fair trade label indicates that the product you're eating has been vetted by a third party that makes sure that it meets various workplace and environmental standards which includes things like minimum price Democratic organization and the avoidance of certain GMO and hazardous materials the whole point of this is just to ensure that we don't have slavery in our coffee Fields so that you can continue your all-nighter coffee binge to finish that history essay you should have finished a week ago now you will be happy to hear that Starbucks was actually one of the driving forces to put some measurable regulations on the coffee industry back in the early 2000s and that really helped the rest of the industry to adopt the certification now if you look at the Starbucks website and branding you will get the impression that they are super gung-ho doers of the environment fair trade leaders okay their whole mission is to quote Inspire and nurture the human spirit with such a slogan and their people first branding one would think that their care and attention would reach all the way to the people who make their success possible and indeed they brag about being one of the largest purchasers of fair trade certified coffee in the world oh no no sorry sorry that that was that was what they used to say actually because they they don't buy Fair Trade coffee anymore instead now they actually created their own certification that's done in-house called Cafe Cafe stands for coffee and Farmers equity and this move should be a red flag because it definitely is see Starbucks boasts that they've been working with Fair Trades since 2000 but that was actually actually only with certain beverages in certain countries see fair trade certified coffee has been around since 1994 and yet the first Starbucks Fair Trade coffee didn't arrive in my own country of Canada until 2013. but see by 2013 Starbucks was already well on its way of phasing out fair trade entirely in favor of this new in-house certification program and yes I'm sorry this is going to be one of those videos oh here we go again sadly this is a very common thing amongst big big businesses they latch onto a label for the image that's associated with it and then when they're able to they switch to a more corporate friendly certification or they just literally make up their own which is what we're dealing with here and from a corporate perspective why would you not you you get to pick and choose the ethics that hurt your wallet the least spin the wording so you sound like a super Fab super fragilistic hero you can bury all those boring details and pages and pages of Mind numbing corporate jargon and then you have to sit back well nobody double checks your work this is like when the substitute teacher came into your classroom and just gave you some random assignment and it was just an open book test except you wrote the book that the test is on and you wrote the test and nobody grades it with so many certifications floating around these days who even knows the difference between fair trade rainforest Alliance b Corps Etc the truth is not many people and we do but only a little bit more than most people now understandably this raft of certifications has been developed in part to make the chore of being a consumer easier but it has also made it much much harder we would love to discuss these certifications in Greater detail but it's not exactly the type of thing that YouTube would favor in The Almighty algorithm if you are interested or you think that you would like to know more about the specific certifications for each thing that makes a company more reliable let us know because maybe we can do some bonus content or something like that but anyway Cafe was developed in collaboration with outside help from conservation International and it it does involve a third-party verification process which I suppose might be better than no outside involvement at all except for the fact that conservation International is arguably just a green washing PR Company masquerading as a non-profit to help clean up the images of some of the worst businesses on Earth who collectively provide almost a quarter of their revenue streams so that's a bit awkward and sadly you can see that it's not working if you look at the cafe claims they really aren't what you'd expect from anyone serious about ethical trade and they've faced some pretty valid criticisms over the years for one Cafe has no established minimum price and it's unclear just how much Starbucks pays per pound of coffee because they stopped reporting those details to the public a decade ago any company that paid a respectable amount of money would be sure to brag about it right so we're not going to assume that they're not paying people what they should be but they're definitely not paying people what they should be one of the major problems with the coffee industry is that beam prices are so volatile that farmers are often unable to invest for the long-term success of their crops this not only sucks for Farmers living in constant uncertainty mounds of debt and risk of shutting down at any point but it also doesn't bode well for the environment that these crops depend on organic and future oriented farming strategies cost money which is why it's so important to pay a decent price now at least Cafe has some regulations in place to protect workers from exploitation but Cafe workplaces only have to undergo inspections every two to three years with some labor Advocates saying that even yearly inspections aren't enough so it's not all together surprising that Cafe certified farms and plantations keep getting caught using child workers and what essentially amounts to slave labor oh but let's be clear not caught by Starbucks of course that would require them to be like proactive and deal with the issue that they were caught by local inspectors taken together it's really hard to imagine Starbucks as caring about the well-being of the people it depends on for its 30 billion dollars a year in Revenue except maybe as a marketing Ploy but sadly they didn't even go that far unfortunately this kind of disassociation from their supply chain has some real world ramifications coffee is an incredibly dramatic plant you can't just stick it anywhere and hope that it grows and it's very susceptible to changes in the environment deforestation changing weather patterns pollutions and so on this is basically like the prom queen of plants we're at the point where arabica beans the most popular coffee drink around the world is literally listed as an endangered species and that's impressive considering that it's a species that humans have farmed in order to make as many of them as possible in fact sixty percent of all coffee species around the world are threatened with extend function according to one team of researchers but don't worry it is not all doom and gloom if you've made it this far thank you so much we're going to reward you here with a little bit of positivity boost okay the Goliath of corporate Starbucks has a challenger named David with A New Perspective a beanie rolled up high on his head some scuffed up Converse and a palette of a sommelier yes the hipsters have once again looked disprovingly down on the cultural norms and presented an alternative that costs a lot more money Starbucks in their Fair Trade coffee gymnastics is what is known as the coffee world as second wave coffee these Big Brand chains transitioned us away from drinking the cheap often instant coffee of the first wave purely for the caffeine boost to this new experiential lifestyle coffee but our hipster July took wearing friends are not going to be drinking any of that no sir third wave is local coffee shops with tattooed Baristas only serving small batch roasted beans harvested 2 000 meters above sea level weighed to Precision brood at the exact right temperature for that specific bean and of course serve black because cream and sugar essentially amounts to blasphemy this is the no absolutely everything about your coffee movement which despite its penchant for pretension has been an important step towards supporting local farmers love them or had them these guys are actually making a difference these coffee shops often have direct relationships with small scale single origin producers that are able to grow their crops more sustainably and at a higher quality so you can get that much needed caffeine fix with the relative ease knowing precisely where your beans are coming from third wave coffee hailed a trend in the industry towards more intentional harvesting roasting and brewing with a focus on falling in love with the coffee itself it paved the way for what some enthusiasts have been referring to as yes fourth wave coffee or the SCI science of coffee basically an even more precise technology advanced version of third wave with more of an emphasis on learning how our coffee production is affecting the environments we depend on all of these ways combined provided the basis for the latest iteration of coffee consumption yes the fifth wave of coffee the business of coffee in which we see the ideals of third wave implemented at massive scale this is business meets ethics and is well underway with such Brands as Blue Bottle Coffee blue stone lane and Caravan Coffee Roasters the success of these big Brands shows that there is a huge demand for ethical coffee but if you have ever tried one of these new Fandango coffee shops you might have noticed a few differences beyond the fact that they don't serve caramel macchiatos yeah I don't know the coffee just tastes kind of weird to me and um I have learned that this Brewing style is sort of uh described as tea like which is not exactly why people drink coffee I think in the end now is really not the time for half brewed Starbucks style Solutions we need leaders who are gonna go all in on addressing the underlying problems of this whole coffee situation especially if we want to keep drinking coffee farther and farther into the future and it's actually kind of exciting that we have not only more ethical coffee coming onto the marketplace but like you know stuff that apparently tastes better I'm not saying that it doesn't taste better but it it just doesn't taste like coffee to me but that being said I don't actually drink coffee I drink coffee like maybe once a month so yeah but regardless of whether or not you like the flavor and palette of this new coffee you have to be able to appreciate the standards that have been put into them from an ethical standpoint so when you're going to get your next cup of coffee please consider trying one of these new sustainably sourced coffee brands or just drink less coffee because that's what I do but regardless of your coffee preferences thank you so much for watching and we'll see you in the next one

Channel: Future Proof

Views: 810,537

Keywords: coffee, starbucks, starbucks coffee, coffee pods, coffee maker, coffee machine, coffee beans, coffee vs espresso, third wave coffee, starbucks barista, starbucks cup sizes, starbucks best coffee, frapuccino, coffee shop, barista, espresso, chemex, french press, starbucks drinks

Id: NP4NL6evnD0

Length: 15min 53sec (953 seconds)

Published: Wed Jul 20 2022