The "thick eyebrows and big eyes" Starbucks is also not reassuring.
On December 13, some media reported that two Starbucks stores in Wuxi city frequently touched food safety red lines, including the use of expired ingredients and tampering with shelf life, which were known to store supervisors.
In this regard, Starbucks said at noon on the same day that it had paid attention to the reports of two Starbucks stores in Wuxi, and was deeply shocked by the food safety issues involved in the reports, "We are highly concerned, and have closed these two stores at the first time, and immediately launched an in-depth investigation." ”
At the same time, the market supervision departments at the two levels of Wuxi City and District conducted key inspections of the Starbucks Zhenze Road store and Changxing Building store involved, and initially verified that the relevant enterprises had changed the internal control period of food raw materials and used raw materials beyond the internal control period, and ordered the 2 stores involved to close down for rectification.
In addition, the local market supervision department simultaneously carried out inspections of 82 other Starbucks stores in the city, and found that 15 problems such as employees not wearing work hats, messy placement of items in the processing area, and incomplete disinfection records have been ordered to rectify. The Wuxi Municipal Bureau of Market Supervision conducted an administrative interview with Starbucks (China) Northeast China, requiring the company to conduct a comprehensive self-examination of the existing food safety problems and implement rectification.
The Wuxi Municipal Market Supervision Bureau will continue to organize forces at the municipal and district levels to conduct in-depth investigations of the two Starbucks stores involved and seriously investigate and deal with them according to law. From now on, we will deploy special food safety rectification actions focusing on cracking down on false labeling of production dates and shelf life in the city, and make every effort to ensure the safety of citizens.
On the evening of the 13th, Starbucks China's official Weibo posted again, "After investigation, we have confirmed that the partners (employees) of the two Wuxi stores reported by the media on December 13 did have operational irregularities." We have an unshirkable responsibility to ensure food safety. The situation in these two stores is a high warning of our shortcomings in the daily implementation of food safety standards. In this regard, we would like to express our sincerest apologies to all Starbucks customers. ”
Starbucks said it has been putting food safety first in the 22 years since it entered the Chinese mainland market. We apologize again for this incident and will actively correct it. At the same time, it will closely cooperate with the investigation of relevant government departments and implore the public and the media to continue to supervise it.
The image is from Starbucks China's official Weibo
Food safety issues are not the first time they have occurred
The People's Daily commented that "no matter how big the brand is, it is impossible to maintain freshness for a long time", and pointed out that "food safety is the foundation of the survival of catering enterprises, and it is also the minimum respect for the health of consumers." The red line cannot be touched, and the bottom line cannot be broken. The 'gold standard' must not be just a slogan of propaganda, and 'flight inspection' must not be reduced to a form of sloppiness. This incident also reveals that food safety requires self-discipline and also needs other disciplines. We hope that relevant enterprises can face up to and reflect on the failure of their own internal regulatory model, and also expect the regulatory authorities to come up with more stringent measures to force enterprises to guard the bottom line of food safety. ”
Before U.S. stocks on Monday, Starbucks fell 0.5 percent pre-market, closing at $115.56, down 1 percent.
According to reports, the above two Wuxi Starbucks expired ingredients have been made into a number of best-selling drinks sold, the shelf life of only one day of black tea liquid and matcha liquid leftovers too much, the clerk will directly tamper with the shelf life, the store supervisor knows this behavior, but also "words and deeds" to tamper with the shelf life, some ingredients were artificially "extended" for a week. For the pastries that promise to "not stay overnight after opening", they are still secretly on the shelves the next day.
There are also hygiene problems such as using bar towels to wipe garbage cans, and not discarding the towels, but continuing to use them, as well as handling problematic ingredients in advance to cope with inspections.
This is not the first time that Starbucks has received attention because of food safety issues, a month ago, Starbucks Coffee (Shenzhen) Co., Ltd. Yantian Yihaicheng Second Branch was warned by the Shenzhen Municipal Market Supervision and Administration Bureau for failing to clean up food (Taiwanese mooncakes) that exceeded the shelf life in time. Earlier, in August this year, Starbucks was on the hot search for the "400 yuan buffet incident", and a food blogger who visited the store was counterattacked by suspected Starbucks employees and water troops because of spitting on the buffet, causing concern.
China is Starbucks' largest overseas market
As the world's first FMCG coffee brand, Starbucks entered the Chinese mainland in 1999 and was one of the earliest international coffee brands to enter the Chinese market. On its official Starbucks website, it made a commitment: "Based on the highest industry standards, develop and strictly implement Starbucks gold food safety standards." ”
According to the data of fiscal year 2021, Starbucks revenue in China was $3.674 billion, an increase of 42.29% year-on-year, same-store sales in the Chinese market increased by 17%, in the fourth quarter, Starbucks China business revenue was $964 million, an increase of 18% year-on-year, it is worth noting that Starbucks China same-store sales fell by 7% in the fourth quarter, mainly due to the repeated impact of the epidemic in mid-August, 80% of stores in China were affected. But that doesn't stop China from being Starbucks' largest overseas market.
As of the end of the financial reporting period, Starbucks China opened 5358 stores in 208 cities, an increase of 654 over the previous fiscal year, ranking first in the world in the number of new stores. At present, Starbucks China stores account for 31.27% of the total number of global stores, and among the 7272 international stores in North America, China accounts for 73.68%.
Kevin Johnson, president and CEO of Starbucks, has said, "In fiscal 2022, Starbucks China plans to enter 230 cities with a total of 6,000 stores. ”
Starbucks, which has been eating in the Chinese market for more than 20 years, is currently in a situation of tigers and wolves, and it is facing a fully competitive market. In the instant coffee track, Santo got hundreds of millions of yuan of financing from CPE Yuanfeng Capital and IDG in June, with a post-investment valuation of 4.5 billion yuan, and another local boutique instant coffee brand, Yongpu Coffee, also received millions of financing; in the freshly ground coffee race, China's local specialty coffee brand MANNER raised 4 times and got hundreds of millions of dollars in financing, and the specialty coffee brand M Stand, which focuses on creative coffee drinks and offline space experience, raised 2 times in half a year, with an amount of more than 600 million yuan.
In addition to the competition in the coffee market, Starbucks is also facing the impact of the rise of new tea drinks, and the teas of Xicha and Naixue have soared all the way and their fame has increased greatly. However, similar to Starbucks, Heytea and others often expose food safety problems and cause public opinion to crusade. But this is not an area that can be "poor", if Starbucks continues to have problems in food safety and internal management, its brand advantages will gradually dissipate, coupled with the huge volume of its offline stores, any small risks should be snuffed out in the cradle in time.
(Titanium Media App Editor Yang Yaru Comprehensive People's Daily, 21st Century Business Herald, etc.)