After Starbucks food safety issues are exposed, will you still consume it?
Recently, Starbucks has been exposed to problems such as expired coffee ingredients and arbitrary changes to the shelf life.
Consumers believe that the quality of Starbucks is not worthy of its higher price.
Experts believe that Starbucks’ evaluations of stores are often based on performance and profit, which to a certain extent contributes to the unhealthy trend of store managers’ disregard of food safety issues.
In recent years, the coffee track has been extremely hot.
Not only have many new faces poured into the coffee track, some new teas are also selling coffee.
Faced with numerous competitors and rising costs, where does Starbucks go?
Food safety loopholes under the guidance of performance and profit
Recently, Starbucks has been exposed to food safety issues.
In one of the stores, a bucket of chocolate liquid after the expiration date was used more than once; the clerk used the expired matcha liquid to make a cup of matcha latte for the customer, then put the pot of matcha liquid back to its original place and waited for the next use .
On the evening of December 13, the Wuxi market supervision department notified the relevant situation and conducted an administrative interview with Starbucks (China) Northeast China, requesting the company to conduct a comprehensive self-inspection and implement rectification on existing food safety issues.
In addition, other 82 Starbucks stores in Wuxi were also found to have 15 problems.
Subsequently, Starbucks China responded by stating that the partners (employees) of the two Wuxi stores did have violations in their operations, and expressed their sincerest apologies to all Starbucks customers.
"We have an unshirkable responsibility to ensure food safety. The conditions of these two stores have highly warned us of the shortcomings in our daily implementation of food safety standards. For this, we extend our sincerest apologies to all Starbucks customers."
Regarding specific rectification measures, Starbucks China mentioned that it will immediately initiate a comprehensive self-inspection of the implementation of food safety standards in all Starbucks stores in mainland China; immediately organize retraining of all retail partners in stores and strictly implement the company’s food safety system; for all In stores, increase the frequency and scope of regular inspections and surprise inspections from internal and third parties.
On December 15, the CBN reporter noticed that the two Starbucks that were exposed on Dianping could not be found-Starbucks Wuxi Zhenze Road Store and Wuxi Changxing Building Store.
In the comments under the apology Weibo issued by Starbucks China, some customers said that they had encountered food safety problems before, such as selling impending coffee beans and stale cakes.
However, some netizens said that as former employees of Starbucks, the company's food safety work is very strict, and problems in individual stores do not represent all stores.
In addition, on the consumer service platform "Black Cat Complaint", there are already 2,407 articles about Starbucks, many of which are related to food safety issues.
Regarding Starbucks selling expired ingredients into a variety of best-selling beverages and tampering with the shelf life, Zhu Danpeng, a Chinese food industry analyst, pointed out that tampering with date labels is actually a means for stores to evade supervision.
The underlying logic of Starbucks food safety breaches lies in the store manager responsibility system.
"There are policies at the top and countermeasures at the bottom. The store manager does not pay attention to the food safety control. At the same time, the weak supervision of the corporate headquarters has led to this kind of phenomenon."
"Starbucks' evaluation of stores is often based on performance and profit, which to a certain extent contributes to the unhealthy trend of store managers' disregard of food safety issues. To prevent such incidents from happening again, companies must adjust the KPI evaluation system for store managers. , Modify the first weight from “performance profit” to “food safety”.” Zhu Danpeng suggested how to curb the above situation.
Wen Zhihong, chairman of Hehong Chain Consulting, believes: “For Starbucks and other coffee brands, it is necessary to reduce the frequency of food safety issues as much as possible. In addition to the establishment of standards and personnel training, the more important thing is how to optimize and The assessment mechanism and supervision mechanism related to food safety."
Chen Wenming, a lawyer from Zhejiang Xiaode Law Firm, told China Business News: “From the perspective of civil liability, Starbucks’ above actions can be regarded as consumer fraud, and it also constitutes the production of food that does not meet the food safety standards or the operation knowingly does not meet the food. Consumers can claim compensation from Starbucks. According to Article 55 of the "Consumer Rights Protection Law", if a business operator engages in fraudulent acts in providing goods or services, it shall be based on the consumer’s It is required to increase the compensation for the losses suffered by the consumer, and the increased amount of compensation shall be three times the price of the consumer to purchase the goods or the cost of receiving the service; if the amount of the increased compensation is less than 500 yuan, it shall be 500 yuan."
"Big Brother" in the coffee industry suffers
Starbucks has entered the Chinese market for more than 20 years.
In January 1999, Starbucks, headquartered in Seattle, USA, opened its first store in China in the China World Trade Center in Beijing.
According to Starbucks China's official website, Starbucks has opened 5,400 stores in more than 200 cities and employs more than 60,000 employees.
China is also the company's largest market outside the United States.
Starbucks financial report shows that the company's 2021 fiscal year net profit attributable to ordinary shareholders was US$4.199 billion (approximately 26.7 billion yuan), an increase of 352.36% year-on-year; operating income was US$29.061 billion, an increase of 23.57% year-on-year.
Although Starbucks' revenue and net profit have achieved considerable growth this fiscal year, the rate of cost increase has not been slow.
The 2021 financial report shows that the company’s "product and distribution costs" for the current fiscal year were US$8.738 billion, an increase of 13.56% over the same period last year.
"Store operating expenses" also increased from 10.764 billion US dollars in the previous year to 11.93 billion US dollars.
Overall, the total operating expenses for this fiscal year were US$24.574 billion, a year-on-year increase of 10%.
In addition, Starbucks China just raised the salary of nearly 40,000 employees in November this year, adjusting the "13 salary" to "14 salary."
This also means that in the next fiscal year, the company's employee wage costs will rise again.
On the one hand, the cost is rising, and on the other hand, the new players on the track join in. As the "big brother" Starbucks who spread the "coffee social" in China, the pressure is not small.
In the 1990s, Starbucks launched the "coffee social" in China. In the first 10 years of this century, "O2O coffee" represented by Luckin and Lian Coffee went out of the circle.
At the moment, specialty coffees represented by Manner, Seesaw, Sanbanban, etc. are being touted.
In addition, coffee products, including some new teas, are also being sold.
According to the company's data, the total amount of domestic coffee industry-related financing disclosures in the first October of this year was close to 6 billion yuan, and some popular brands even received two or three rounds of financing in the first half of the year.
Many new coffee brands have risen rapidly under the further boost of capital.
Some old brands are sprinting into the chain of 100 stores, advancing into the development of shopping centers, breaking through the white-collar circle and moving towards popularization.
Starbucks has always been portrayed as a representative of high-end coffee, and the price of coffee and pastries is usually between thirty and forty yuan.
When more choices emerge, many consumers will choose other brands with prices ranging from 15 to 25 yuan.
This is also reflected in Starbucks' financial report-for the quarter ended October 3, Starbucks US same-store sales increased by 22% year-on-year, and 11% higher than the level before the epidemic.
However, same-store sales in the Chinese market fell by 7% year-on-year.
After the food safety incident, the reporter interviewed several consumers randomly. Most consumers said that they would not choose to go to Starbucks for consumption in the short term, but would choose other coffee brands that are more cost-effective.
Of course, some consumers said that Starbucks is the closest and most convenient coffee shop to the company, so they will still go, but they will choose the more popular products, so that the freshness will be more guaranteed.
In the face of market competition, there are opinions in the industry that the impact of new coffee products should not be underestimated.
Wang Miao, an investor in a private coffee shop in Shanghai, said: “For heavy users who are more picky about coffee tastes, they will not necessarily regard Starbucks as a long-term fixed choice, because to some extent, Starbucks’ brand effect is greater than the product quality itself. ."
However, Zhu Danpeng is optimistic about Starbucks' prospects.
"Starbucks' brand effect and scale effect are still very good. The addition of more and more specialty coffee will make Starbucks grow, because Starbucks' brand tonality has core competitiveness."
Author: Jie Shuyi