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.”
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.
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.
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.
I’m not the one you responded to, but here are a few notes.
Larger stores generally have higher profit margins for the same priced item because they can negotiate lower prices with distributors. So if we’re talking about coffee shops, the flavorings, machines, etc will all be way more expensive for smaller shops.
Larger shops also have a higher throughout per employee, so they also get more total sales, which means they can offer lower prices for the same amount of profit. So if they get competition, they can usually cut prices to bring customers back in, at least until the competition is forced to raise prices again to stay afloat.
So smaller shops rarely compete on price, they generally try to compete on quality, either on service, products, or both. So if you value either of those more than price, you’ll probably get a better deal at a local shop. But if price is your main issue, it’s unlikely to happen because the economies of scale just don’t work like that.
