Manufactured Goods

Whether it’s the merchandise on our shelves, the furniture in our stores or the aprons worn by our baristas, we care how the products in our stores are made.

We’re also committed to social responsibility standards for the merchandise, furniture and other items found in our stores.

Committed to High Standards

We’ve set strong standards for our suppliers and offer them assistance when corrections need to be made to their business practices. Adherence to those standards informs our sourcing decisions and ensures we are working with suppliers who share our commitment to ethical sourcing. Our buyers work directly with a diverse set of suppliers who share our social and environmental values to negotiate contracts for the products we need in our operations or sell to our customers.

Frequent factory assessments have been a key part of our strategy since we started the program in 2006. We continue to work with more than 70 factories on programs to improve standards and in 2013 we assessed 86 factories and found that 22 of them failed to meet our standards. Even though our approach is to work with suppliers to correct the issues, there are times when we halt business due to the nature of the issues and until adequate resolution takes place. While we were able to implement improvement plans with almost half of the factories assessed, we discontinued working with 17 factories for standards issues.

We are continuing to collaborate with others in our industry to address ethical sourcing best practices in our shared supply bases. Starbucks is a member of the Global Social Compliance Program, a business-driven effort to promote the continuous improvement of environmental and working conditions of global supply chains.

“We appreciate Starbucks being at the table, raising awareness and contributing thought leadership to the critical work of improving working and environmental conditions in global supply chains.” - Claudine Musitelli, Vice President Ethical Sourcing and Food Safety Initiatives, Global Social Compliance Programme

Supplier Summit in China

In the spirit of our commitment to global communities, we host a Supplier Summit in China each year. The summit includes a community service event and time for suppliers and factories alike to raise questions and concerns to our staff and other key business leaders from our support centers and markets. May 2014 will be our eighth Supplier Summit and will bring together a variety of stakeholders all working toward improving the working conditions from where our products are sourced.