Jet-setting Starbucks boss makes a mockery of the company’s green claptrap
Most coffee connoisseurs wouldn’t be seen dead in a Starbucks – it’s all sugar and cream, say the purists. Critics accuse it of making expensive desserts rather than real coffee.
With menu highlights such as the Double Chocolatey Chip Frappuccino, which is not only a real drink but also contains 450 calories and 48g of sugar, the naysayers may have a point.
What surely can’t be in doubt is the chain’s desire to show how committed it is to saving the planet.
In fact, anyone who has ever had the misfortune to spend a few minutes scouring the Starbucks corporate website would be forgiven for thinking they had accidentally been redirected to the homepage of Greenpeace, such is the vast amount of time and resources it has dedicated to shouting about its green credentials.
The company’s most recent annual “global impact” report – stretching to an impressive 66 pages no less – takes this supposed environmental dedication to its most absurd extremes.
Among the vacuous promises it makes are that when Starbucks “is at its best” (whatever that means), it will “bridge to a better future for our partners”; “uplift the everyday for our customers”; “help ensure the future of coffee for all for our farmers”; “contribute positively to each of our communities”; and finally, “give more than we take from the environment”, in the words of its former boss Laxman Narasimhan.
At which point it is hard to take anything else that comes out of Starbucks HQ seriously.
In the face of such wispy corporate gobbledygook, it is of absolutely no surprise that it has taken just a single, desperate act to demonstrate that Starbucks’ commitment to saving the planet is as weak as one of its over-priced, oversized lattes.
Its dedication to sustainability – at least as far as management is concerned – was already under question after Narasimhan was summarily dismissed just 17 months into the job following a bigger-than-expected drop in sales.
Narisimhan’s exit looked rash given that the fall amounted to just 3pc across its many territories, and over a financial quarter too, but the stupendously generous package handed to successor Brian Niccol leaves the judgement and reputation of a board that is seemingly obsessed with green objectives in complete tatters.
Among the obscene lengths that the company has gone to get their man is an undertaking that Niccol won’t have to relocate to the company’s base in Seattle when he joins the coffee giant next month. Instead, he will be allowed to “commute” to the office from his home 1,000 miles away in Newport Beach, California by private jet.
Such unfathomably long journeys, which are becoming more common for executives in the post-Covid workplace, are being dubbed a “super-commute”, though surely the “super” part of it ends when you’re joining an organisation that has pledged a “multi-decade commitment to become a resource positive company”.
Given that Niccol is expected at Starbucks HQ a minimum of three days a week under the terms of its hybrid work policies, it means he could potentially rack up 6,000 air miles in one week alone shuttling to and from the office.
The arrangement is even more ridiculous given that Starbucks felt compelled to hand him a pay deal worth as much as $113m (£86m) during his first year in charge. Not only is it four times larger than his predecessor’s annual earnings but it’s one of the largest such executive deals in corporate history.
As if that wasn’t enough, Starbucks has also agreed to provide Niccol with a remote office close to home, along with an “assistant of your choosing for such office” – less “work from home” and more “work close to home”.
His turnaround of wannabe Mexican dining chain Chipotle was undeniably impressive, but Starbucks chairman Mellody Hobson has bent so far backwards to accommodate Niccol’s many whims that she must be in danger of folding like a used Starbucks napkin.
Still, even Starbucks’ stupidity is eclipsed by that of Niccol’s previous employers. Within months of Niccol taking the helm of Chipotle in 2018, the restaurant operator announced it was shifting its headquarters from Denver, Colorado, where it had been based for 25 years to Newport Beach where, coincidentally, Niccol was living with his family.
The company claimed it would help “in the competition for top talent”, but according to reports Niccol’s wife didn’t want to uproot the couple’s children. The statement was also somewhat at odds with the need to try and persuade 400 employees at its existing head office to relocate.
The cult of the star CEO where companies convince themselves that a single individual is so brilliant that they must fork out whatever it takes to land them was already beginning to get out of hand – but situations like this are when it is at its most ludicrous.
It’s unclear where all the forthcoming flying up the West Coast will leave Niccol’s carbon footprint in the rankings, but one imagines that it will dwarf that of your typical Starbucks customer. That’s where the company’s green hypocrisy really rankles.
From its “ethically sourced coffee” to its reforestation programs and vegan milk substitutes, the chain seemingly never tires of trying to convince people that it is a force for good in the world – despite several of its initiatives being dismissed by environmental campaigners as greenwashing.
If Starbucks really wants to make the world a better place, it should focus on what it does best: pouring creamy drinks down the gullets of its customers instead of endlessly trying to force its empty green agenda down their throats.