After Starbucks' food safety problems are exposed, will you still consume them?
Recently, Starbucks has been exposed to problems such as expired coffee ingredients and arbitrary changes in shelf life. Consumers believe that Starbucks' quality does not match its higher prices. Experts believe that Starbucks' assessment of stores is often based on performance and profit, which to a certain extent promotes the bad atmosphere of store managers ignoring food safety issues.
In recent years, the coffee circuit has been extremely hot. Not only are there a lot of new faces pouring into the coffee circuit, but some new tea drinks are also selling coffee. Faced with numerous competitors and rising costs, where does Starbucks go?
Food safety loopholes under the direction of performance profits
Recently, Starbucks was exposed to food safety problems. At one of the stores, a bucket of expired chocolate liquor was used more than once; the clerk made a matcha latte for the customer with an expired matcha liquid and then put the pot back in place for the next use.
On the evening of December 13, the Wuxi market supervision department reported the relevant situation and conducted an administrative interview with Starbucks (China) Northeast China, asking the company to conduct a comprehensive self-examination of the existing food safety problems and implement rectification. In addition, 82 other Starbucks stores in Wuxi were also found to have 15 problems.
Subsequently, Starbucks China responded that the partners (employees) of the two Wuxi stores did have operational irregularities, and expressed their sincerest apologies to all Starbucks customers. "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. ”
Regarding the specific rectification measures, Starbucks China mentioned that it will immediately start a comprehensive self-inspection of the implementation of food safety standards for all Starbucks stores in the Chinese mainland; immediately organize retraining of retail partners in all stores, strictly implement the company's food safety system; and increase the frequency and scope of regular inspections and surprise inspections from internal and third parties for all stores.
At present, two stores have been closed.
On December 15, the first financial reporter noticed that the two Starbucks that had been exposed on the public comments could not be found - Starbucks Wuxi Zhenze Road Store and Wuxi Changxing Building Store.
In the comments under Starbucks China's apology Weibo, some customers said that they had also encountered food safety problems before, such as selling coffee beans in the near period and cakes that were not fresh. However, some netizens said that as a former employee of Starbucks, the company's food safety work is very strict, and the problems in individual stores do not represent all stores.
In addition, on the consumer service platform "Black Cat Complaints", there are 2407 articles about Starbucks, many of which are related to food safety issues.
For Starbucks to make expired raw materials into a variety of best-selling drinks, tampering with shelf life and other behaviors, Chinese food industry analyst Zhu Danpeng pointed out that tampering with date labels and other behaviors are actually a means for stores to evade supervision. The underlying logic of Starbucks' food safety loophole lies in the store manager responsibility system. "There are policies on the top and countermeasures on the bottom, and the store manager does not pay attention to the aspects of food safety control." At the same time, the poor supervision of corporate headquarters has led to the occurrence of such phenomena. ”
"Starbucks' assessment of stores is often performance-oriented profit-oriented, which to some extent promotes the bad atmosphere of store managers ignoring food safety issues." In order to avoid the recurrence of such incidents, companies must adjust the KPI assessment system for store managers and modify the first weight from 'performance profit' to 'food safety'. For how to curb the above situation, Zhu Danpeng suggested.
Wen Zhihong, chairman of Hehong Chain Consulting, said: "For Starbucks and other coffee brands, to reduce the frequency of food safety problems as much as possible, in addition to the establishment of standards and personnel training, it is more important to optimize the assessment mechanism and supervision mechanism related to food safety. ”
Chen Wenming, a lawyer at Zhejiang Xiaode Law Firm, told CBN: "From the perspective of civil liability, the above-mentioned acts of Starbucks can be identified as consumer fraud, and also constitute the production of food that does not meet food safety standards or the operation of food that is known to be non-compliant with food safety standards." For consumers, compensation can be claimed from Starbucks. According to Article 55 of the Law on the Protection of The Rights and Interests of Consumers, where proprietors provide goods or services fraudulently, they shall, at the request of consumers, increase compensation for the losses they have suffered, and the amount of increased compensation shall be three times the price of the goods purchased by consumers or the cost of receiving services; Where the amount of increased compensation is less than 500 yuan, it shall be 500 yuan. ”
The COVID-19 outbreak has also had an impact on Starbucks' global business. Pictured last year in Seoul, South Korea, a Starbucks table and chair were stacked together. Xinhua News Agency information
The "Big Brother" of the coffee industry was affected
Starbucks has been in the Chinese market for more than 20 years. In January 1999, Starbucks, headquartered in Seattle, USA, opened its first store in China at the China World Trade Center in Beijing. According to Starbucks China's official website, Starbucks has opened 5,401 stores in more than 200 cities and employed more than 60,000 people. China is also the company's largest market outside the United States.
Starbucks' financial report shows that the company's net profit attributable to ordinary shareholders for the full year of fiscal 2021 was US$4.199 billion (about 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 increased considerably this fiscal year, the pace of cost increases has not been slow. According to the 2021 financial report, the company's "product and distribution costs" for the fiscal year were $8.738 billion, an increase of 13.56% over the same period last year. "Store operating expenses" also increased to $11.93 billion from $10,764 million in the previous year. Overall, total operating expenses for the fiscal year were $24,574 million, up 10% year-over-year.
In addition, Starbucks China just raised the salaries of nearly 40,000 employees in November this year, adjusting the "13 salaries" to "14 salaries". This also means that in the next fiscal year, the company's employee wage costs will rise again.
On the one hand, the cost rises, on the other hand, the addition of new players in the track, as the "big brother" Starbucks that will roll out the "coffee social" in China, the pressure is not small.
In the 1990s, Starbucks rolled out the "coffee social" in China, and in the first 10 years of this century, the "O2O coffee" represented by Luckin and Lian Coffee came out of the circle. At present, specialty coffees represented by Manner, Seesaw, Three and a Half Meals, etc. are being popular. In addition, coffee products are also sold, including some new tea drinks.
Enterprise investigation data show that the total amount of financing disclosures related to the domestic coffee industry in the first ten months of this year was close to 6 billion yuan, and some popular brands even got 2 or 3 rounds of financing in the first half of the year. Many new coffee brands have risen rapidly with the further boost of capital. Some old brands are sprinting through the chain of hundreds of stores, advancing into the development of shopping malls, and breaking through the white-collar circle to become popular.
All along, Starbucks has been portrayed as a representative of high-end coffee, and the price of coffee and pastries is usually 30 or 40 yuan. When more choices appear, many consumers will choose other brands with prices between 15 and 25 yuan.
This is also reflected in Starbucks' earnings report , where same-store sales in the U.S. rose 22 percent from the same period last year and 11 percent from pre-pandemic levels for the fiscal quarter ended Oct. 3. But same-store sales in the Chinese market fell 7% year-on-year.
After the food safety incident, the reporter randomly interviewed several consumers, most of whom said that they would not choose to go to Starbucks in the short term, but would choose other coffee brands with higher cost performance. Of course, some consumers said that Starbucks is the closest and most convenient coffee shop to the company, so it will still go, but will choose more popular products, so that the freshness will be more guaranteed.
In the face of market competition, there are views in the industry that the impact of new coffee should not be underestimated. Wang Miao, an investor in a private café in Shanghai, said: "For heavy users who are more picky about coffee taste, they may not necessarily use Starbucks as a long-term fixed choice, because to some extent, Starbucks's brand effect is greater than the product quality itself." ”
However, Zhu Danpeng is optimistic about the prospects of Starbucks. "Starbucks' brand effect and scale effect are still very good, and the addition of more and more specialty coffee will make Starbucks grow, because Starbucks' brand tone has core competitiveness."