- cross-posted to:
- labour@hexbear.net
- cross-posted to:
- labour@hexbear.net
Thousands of unionized Starbucks workers will walk off their jobs on Thursday, with the one-day work stoppages coming to protest the company’s stance with shops that voted to organize, according to Starbucks Workers United.
The labor action is timed to for Starbucks’ Red Cup Day, an annual event in which the coffee giant hands out holiday-themed reusable cups. Starbucks has refused to negotiate in good faith over staffing and other issues that are particularly acute during promotions, according to the union.
“Starbucks is creating unnecessarily stressful working conditions by scheduling promotion after promotion without increasing staffing,” Neha Cremin, a Starbucks worker in Oklahoma City, said in a statement to CBS MoneyWatch. “Starbucks has made it clear that they won’t listen to workers, so we’re advocating for ourselves by going on strike.”
Or support a local Cafe that treats their workers right. Can be hard to find, but they do exist.
I’ll support them if they give me a better deal, lol.
I always find it funny how local places are like “yeah buy local buy local, it’s so important. No, it’s not important enough for us to give you a better deal.”
I hear ya on that. My philosophy is that if I’m going out for coffee I’ll pay for a good one from a local Cafe. Most mornings I’ll make it at home to compensate for the cost.
Things are generally cheaper when you buy more of them. It’s true that once you pass a certain threshold this isn’t as significant, but that threshold can be pretty high.
Then you get into things like commodities trading (eg buying and maybe even selling futures), which is something Starbucks engages in. It would be very hard for a small shop to participate in commodities trading (barriers of entry due to size, time in the day, etc), let alone do it well.
There’s also a bunch of little things that ar a “do it once for all stores” or “do it once for a single store”. At a mom and pop that usually means that they won’t be able to do it as well as a bigger store because of time and resource constraints.
The coffee is better than Starbucks at small cafes because they don’t burn the beans. Starbucks literally over roasts their beans so they all taste the same. Also it lasts longer on the shelf.
Good coffee doesn’t need to “last longer” because you’re going to drink it fast.
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Yeah. If small businesses want to compete, they have to do better than “we’re a small business but we still charge you the same price or more.”
Fuck that, lol. If they care so much, why can’t they take the hit? Why does it always have the be the customer? Lol.
I would imagine economies of scale comes into it heavily. Smaller, independent cafes cannot get nearly the same low costs as huge corporations. They could easily be paying two, three times the price for supplies and don’t have the financial cushions to eat losses.
I’m glad I found someone who is knowledgeable about this.
How much does coffee supplies cost local cafes vs. big chains? Do you have exact figures?
Starbucks doesn’t publish their bulk prices for obvious reasons, unfortunately. You can find people making guesses online (such as this guy) but for instance he uses Costco bulk coffee prices to calculate and I highly doubt Starbucks is paying that much. Your average small independent cafe is going to be getting their supplies from generic wholesale stores and sites, where you can view prices for cups and things. Hell, I know some places that legit just buy their milk for their cafe at places like Aldi. So they’re paying consumer prices for milk versus the bulk discount a mega corp would get.
Edit for missing period which made an odd sentence.
Thanks for the useful information. I wonder if we can find how much Starbucks pays because they’re publicly traded and the amount of money they spent on product should be available to investors.
Their fillings are freely available on their website and will give you some insights, but they don’t get anywhere close to their unit price for coffee.
That said, their most recent 10-Q says things like
They do the same for other commodities. It would probably be difficult for a small scale player to participate effectively, if at all, in reading commodities to try to minimize commodity cost.
https://investor.starbucks.com/financial-data/sec-filings/default.aspx
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Of course I do. Do you? Lol.
Most businesses try to maximize profit. This intrinsically involves giving people the least they’re willing to accept while charging them the most they’re willing to pay.
If the ‘local’ option doesn’t give me a better deal than the big chains, I’m gonna go with the big chains. If they care so much about providing their service to their community, then they can make less profit. But they won’t because, like most businesses, their goal is to maximize profit.
I eagerly await for you to tell me why everything I just said was wrong, lol.
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