Two university-run cafes, Café Central (Student Central) and The Street Cafe (Charles Sikes) are “proud to serve” Starbucks brand outlets. The university should not be “proud to serve” Starbucks coffee.

Firstly, the university cafes selling Starbucks coffee are considerably more expensive than other non-Starbucks university cafes. Pricing is consistent between other university cafes (such as The Toast House in Sovereign Design House, Caffeine Lab in Joseph Priestley, and Pulse Café in Daphne Steele) even though these have different coffee suppliers. The only two cafes on campus with more expensive coffee pricing are the two Starbucks “proud to serve” outlets, which are bound by Starbucks’ pricing. This increased price in the Starbucks outlets ranges from 20p for a flat white to 95p for an americano or £1 for a mocha when compared to equivalent sized coffee drinks in other university cafes. Particularly as Café Central is so centrally located within campus and is therefore very convenient (compared to, say, The Toast House at the edge of campus or Pulse Café in Daphne Steele which is not on the main campus), the university should be making efforts to provide a café for students in the heart of the Student Central building which is not overpriced.

Furthermore, the inclusion of Starbucks on campus is supporting not one but two global multinational corporations with dubious ethical records. Starbucks “proud to serve” outlets are supplied through a partnership between Starbucks and Nestle [1]. Starbucks is a company with a history of union busting [2-3] and therefore it’s inclusion in Student Central, home of the students’ union on campus, is problematic. Starbucks also has a questionable ethical record. Starbucks hold themselves to their own internally set ethical standards known as C.A.F.E. Practices (Coffee and Farmer Equity Practices) [4], however, Starbucks were sued by the National Consumers League in the USA for false and deceptive claims around how ethical their coffee is based on these C.A.F.E. Practices [5]. Additionally, while Starbucks have a goal to achieve net-zero by 2050, their carbon footprint has increased in the years since the announcement of that goal [6]. When it comes to Nestle, the corporation has a long history of immoral practices including labour abuses such as modern slavery and child labour [7-8], and the unethical aggressive marketing of baby formula which has been implicated in the deaths of over 10 million infants in low- and middle-income countries [9].

These two global mega corporations are not the kind of businesses we should be supporting through student café outlets. The university already sources coffee from three other suppliers: Matthew Algie (a Glasgow-based coffee roaster with a strong commitment to sustainability) [10] for the Toast House and Caffeine Lab, Bean Brothers Coffee Company (a local Huddersfield-based small independent coffee roaster) [11] for the Pulse Café, and Cafeology (a Sheffield-based sustainable coffee company) for the coffee machine in the SU shop [12]. All of these coffee providers are being sold on campus at a cheaper price than Starbucks coffee, are in better alignment with the university’s sustainability strategy [13], and have an existing supply chain to supply the university, therefore it should not be difficult to switch Café Central and The Street Café to one of these alternative suppliers.

Give students reasonably priced coffee and stop supporting global mega corporations by getting Starbucks OUT of the university!

References:

1. ‘Starbucks and the We Proudly Serve Starbucks^® Coffee Programme’: https://weproudlyservestarbucks.com/gb/about-us
2. ‘Starbucks must reinstate fired workers, federal judge rules’: https://apnews.com/article/memphis-national-labor-relations-board-43f21bd91286aa9a9c8f77d1291795e4
3. ‘Starbucks creating ‘culture of fear’ as it fires dozens involved in union efforts’: https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2022/aug/25/starbucks-union-employees-fired
4. ‘C.A.F.E. Practices: Starbucks Approach to Ethically Sourcing Coffee’: https://about.starbucks.com/press/2024/cafe-practices-starbucks-approach-to-ethically-sourcing-coffee/
5. ‘National Consumers League sues Starbucks, alleging coffee giant deceives customers with claims of “100% ethical” coffee, tea’: https://nclnet.org/national-consumers-league-sues-starbucks-alleging-coffee-giant-deceives-customers-with-claims-of-100-ethical-coffee-tea/
6. ‘Starbucks loses ground on emissions reduction, sets new 2030 sustainability goals’: https://www.esgdive.com/news/starbucks-loses-ground-on-emissions-reduction-sets-new-2030-sustainability/709214/
7. ‘Doe v. Nestle USA Inc., United States Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit': https://cdn.ca9.uscourts.gov/datastore/opinions/2014/09/04/10-56739.pdf
8. ‘Nestle confirms labor abuse among its Thai seafood suppliers’: https://www.ap.org/news-highlights/uncategorized/2015/nestle-confirms-labor-abuse-among-its-thai-seafood-suppliers/
9. ‘Mortality from Nestle’s Marketing Campaign of Infant Formula in Low and Middle-Income Countries’: https://www.nber.org/system/files/working_papers/w24452/w24452.pdf
10. ‘Matthew Algie, Sustainability’: https://matthewalgie.com/sustainability
11. ‘Bean Brothers Coffee Company, About’: https://www.beanbrothers.co.uk/about
12. ‘Cafeology’: https://www.cafeology.com/
13. ‘University of Huddersfield Sustainability’: https://www.hud.ac.uk/sustainability/