Journey of the Bean

Coffee Grows on a Farm - Throughout the Coffee Belt, farmers and their families rely on coffee for
their livelihood.
Coffee Field - After a year in a nursery, healthy coffee plants are moved to the fields where they will
mature into fruit-bearing trees
Flowering - A coffee tree typically blossoms once a year, producing white, jasmine-scented flowers.
After the blossoms fall away, a cluster of green cherries forms.
Coffee Life Cycle - A mature coffee tree typically produces a yearly cycle of coffee cherries.
Harvest - When coffee cherries are ripe, they are picked by hand.
Fruit Production - It takes about nine months for a coffee cherry to fully grow and ripen from green
to red.
Processing (Fruit Removal) - After the coffee cherries are picked, the fruit (cherry) needs to be
removed from the green bean.
Drying - After the coffee is processed, the green beans, usually still in their protective parchment
layer, are raked and dried.
Resting - When the coffee is dry, it is bagged and stored. Coffee needs to rest to develop flavor
Dry Milling - During this final step before export, the parchment is removed from the green bean and
the beans are sorted for quality.
Export - The green beans are put into bags, loaded onto a container and shipped. The journey from
origin to roasting plant takes four to nine weeks depending on where the coffee is being shipped from.
Arrival - Once the green coffee beans arrive at port, they are sent to one of our plants to be checked
for quality.
Cupping - A sample of all coffee arriving at our plants is tasted to validate that the quality of coffee
was maintained during its journey.
Roasting - Coffee is roasted by asmall team, led by a masterroaster, that transformsthe green beans
into rich,aromatic, roasted coffee.
Blending - A small team of experts works to ensure each blend is
thoughtfully created.
Packaging - After coffee is roasted, it is packaged to keep it fresh.
You - Coffee’s journey ends with you! You are the last in a long line of people who touch the coffee,
making sure each cup is perfect.
Customers - All the care from the farm to you gives customers the quality beverages and
coffee they expect from Starbucks.

C.A.F.E. Practices: Our Approach to Buying Coffee

WE BELIEVE IN ETHICAL SOURCING
As you have been exploring the world of coffee and the role Starbucks plays, you have no doubt
heard about “ethical sourcing.” It sounds like a big deal—and it is. Ethical sourcing is something
Starbucks has believed in and cared about since our very beginnings as a company back in 1971.
CONSERVATION INTERNATIONAL - In 1998, Starbucks started working with
Conservation International (CI), a nonprofit
A REVOLUTIONARY VERIFICATION PROGRAM - In partnership with Conservation International,
we created our own set of comprehensive guidelines to ensure that the coffee we buy is ethically
grown and responsibly traded. We call our verification program C.A.F.E. Practices, which stands
for Coffee and Farmer Equity.
C.A.F.E. (Coffee and Farmer Equity) - Practices helps us both create a longterm supply of high-
quality coffee and positively impact the lives and livelihoods of coffee farmers and their communities.
It’s one of the first third-party verified set of sustainability standards in the coffee industry. This means
that independent verifiers are responsible for ensuring that our standards—from protecting workers’
rights to conserving water and energy—are being accurately measured by experts.

Four Criteria Make Up C.A.F.E. Practices

Certification Organizations
Key Things to Remember
We explored our C.A.F.E. Practices and how we strive to meet the needs of coffee farmers and their
communities, fulfilling Our Mission and Values by conducting business in responsible ways that we
can be consistently proud of.
• Starbucks is committed to ethically sourcing 100% of our coffee in partnership with
Conservation International
• We source coffee in ways that meet the needs of the present without compromising the ability
of future generations to meet their own needs
• Our ethical sourcing guidelines, C.A.F.E. Practices, are made up of four components: Quality,
Economic Transparency, Social Responsibility and Environmental Leadership.
This approach helps farmers grow coffee in a way that’s better for both people and the planet.

Investing in Coffee: The Present and Future

FARMER SUPPORT CENTERS
The goal of Farmer Support Centers is bold: to help ensure the future supply of high-quality coffee by
providing on-the-farm support to farmers around the world. Farmer Support Centers (FSCs) are
staffed with Starbucks partners—but instead of being baristas or roasters, these partners are
agronomists (plant and soil scientists) and quality experts. In 2004, we opened our first FSC in Costa
Rica. There are now nine FSCs
FSC Locations

1. Alajuela, Costa Rica

2. Guatemala City, Guatemala
3. Kigali, Rwanda
4. Mbeya, Tanzania
5. Manizales, Colombia
6. Yunnan, China
7. Addis Ababa, Ethiopia
8. North Sumatra, Indonesia
9. Chiapas, Mexico
10. Varginha, Minas Gerais State, Brazil
OPEN-SOURCE AGRONOMY - This means our team of agronomists share research, education,
best practices and resources with farmers around the world, regardless if Starbucks buys their coffee
or not.
HACIENDA ALSACIA
As part of this effort, we purchased a coffee farm in Costa Rica in 2013. Since then, Hacienda Alsacia
(ah-SYEN-dah ahl-SAH-syah) has been an innovation hub for Starbucks, helping to better
understand the challenges coffee farmers face and determining best practices and solutions. In 2018,
we built a visitor center on the farm, where people can experience the entire journey of a cup of
coffee from seedling, to roasting, to tasting.
INVESTING IN COFFEEFARMING COMMUNITIES
Starbucks is making investments in coffeegrowing communities around the world
in various forms, including making funds available to farmers through the Global.
Global Farmer Fund
The Starbucks Global Farmer Fund is a $50 million commitment to provide loans to coffee farmers to
strengthen their farms through coffee-tree renovation and infrastructure improvements, including a $2
million farmer loan commitmeopefnt from Starbucks in partnership with the Inter-American
Development Bank (IDB) to support 2,000 primarily women coffee growers in Colombia.
100 Million Trees
Now more than ever, the future of coffee depends on healthy trees. Since 2015, more than 21 million
trees have been donated to coffee farmers to replace trees that are declining in productivity due to
age and disease, such as coffee leaf rust. We are working toward a goal of providing 100 million
climate-resilient coffee trees to farmers by 2025
THE SUSTAINABLE COFFEE CHALLENGE
Starbucks is a founding member, alongside a growing coalition of industry leaders, of the Sustainable
Coffee Challenge, a call to action led by Conservation International to make coffee the world’s first
sustainable agricultural product. The Challenge is bringing the industry together to sustain the future
supply of coffee while also ensuring the prosperity and well-being of farmers and workers and
conserving nature.
Key Things to Remember
• Our Farmer Support Centers use an open-source approach to share our research and resources
with the industry
• We’re donating millions of climate-resilient trees to help farmers fight threats like coffee leaf rust
with the goal of providing 100 million trees by 2025
• As a founding member of the Sustainable Coffee Challenge, we’re collaborating with the industry to
make coffee the world’s first sustainable agricultural product

The Green Coffee Quality

A JOURNEY AROUND THE WORLD
ENSURING QUALITY - From origin, coffee journeys to one of our roasting plants
around the world. Each coffee is tasted multiple times to ensure quality at every leg of the
journey —all before it even goes to one of our roasting plants.
Working Together to Ensure Quality
We have two key locations that work together to ensure green coffee quality is maintained on the
bean’s journey around the world:
• Starbucks Coffee Trading Company in Lausanne, Switzerland
• The Global Coffee Quality team in Seattle, Washington, USA
the teams can taste anywhere from 100–600 cups of coffee a day, equaling more than 250,000 cups
a year. Starbucks purchases a lot of coffee (around 600 million pounds / 272 million kilograms!) each
year. We purchase approximately 5% of the world’s coffee, all of which meets our rigorous quality
standards.
Starbucks Coffee Trading Company (SCTC) works closely with farmers that grow and supply green
coffee and is responsible for Starbucks green coffee purchases. We have many close business
relationships with farmers based on trust and respect, allowing us to grow our businesses together.
Tasting Offer Samples - All “offersa samples” are tasted by the Coffee Quality team at SCTC
Negotiating Buying Contracts - A buying contract includes the quality of the coffee, the amount of
coffee we will buy, the shipment period and the price we will pay for it.
Tasting Preshipment Samples - Once a contract to purchase coffee is complete, the green coffee is
shipped from origin to its next destination. Before the beans are loaded onto a ship, %glotes the
coffee again for quality. This is called a “preshipment sample.”
Shipment - After coffee is purchased and the preshipment sample is approved, SCTC arranges for
shipment from origin. Once the coffee crosses the rail of the ship, quality becomes the responsibility
of the Global Coffee Quality and SCTC teams.
The Global Coffee Quality team is in charge of quality from when the coffee is shipped and arrives
at the roasting plants until the time it is ready to be brewed.
Tasting Arrival Samples - This is called an “arrival sample.” The Global Coffee Quality team is
responsible for confirming nothing happened to the quality of the coffee during transit.
ENSURING QUALITY - The quality teams communicate frequently so the transition of coffee from
origin to Starbucks goes smoothly and quality is maintained.
Key Things to Remember
• Starbucks has teams in place around the globe to ensure quality is maintained at each step of the coffee’s
journey from farm to cup
• All our coffees are tasted as an offer sample, preshipment sample and arrival sample to ensure quality
• There are fewer than 20 partners globally who are qualified to make decisions about the flavor profiles and
quality of our coffee in the cup.