COMMUNITY A case study on Starbucks’ community stores

Starbucks is a company that has dominated the coffee market since the mid 1900s and has been able to maintain that title ever since. Today, Starbucks can be found in multiple location, multiple states, and even multiple countries. Overall, Starbucks has become a successful company with the audience it has been able to pull within multiple aspects while still diversifying themselves from modern communication methods like KFC or Wendy’s. Recently, Starbucks has been pushing in the inclusion of the new store, called: Community Stores.

These Community Stores provide immense opportunities for locations that may be living in poverty or just a lower income area. This has deemed to be quite a successful plan overall, bringing in opportunities, benefits, and advantages for working under one of these community store Starbucks. They provide health insurance, scholarships, and partner with minority owned business to boost outreach and play a closer part in the community than a normal Starbucks may do. To the community, they provide more office seating and tables than one may normally see at a Starbucks. Compared to other stores, as well, these Community Stores come with meeting areas and meeting opportunities that may benefit any resident of the area.

In the end, these Community Stores seem to have a beneficial effect on the community, and are still able to provide for the store’s resources. A failed instance of this can be seen with the Panera’s implementation of the Pay-What-You-Want dining campaign that was aimed to target upper class citizens to pay extra for other people’s food. In the end, this failed due to their target audience and who was paying in the end. Overall, Starbucks has been able to sustain their point for at least five years, but will they be able to keep these stores operating and providing for the community around them?