I have been reading through a few blogs, for example Shu Woon Leong’s blog post You & Starbucks. It’s bigger then coffee, and a common theme that I am seeing is the release of the new Starbucks “Tribute” products and drinks. So the other day I was sitting at home watching TV and I saw a rather interesting Starbucks commercial that I thought I needed to share.
Now, there is a lot going on in this commercial, but the one thing that stands out to me is the supply chain that is shown. Now it may not be Starbucks’ exact supply chain but it is a good summary. A little mistake in the commercial is it made me believe that Starbucks has a pull supply chain*, because Sue orderers her coffee and then the whole chain from the farmer to the barista makes the coffee for her, but I know that is done to add effect to the commercial. Apart from that is it very good commercial and well representative of the side of the coffee industry that few people see.
*A pull supply chain is when a product isn’t produced until it is ordered, this would be difficult for Starbucks because the coffee beans take months to grow.
The supply chain that I derived from this video is, Sue orders then:
Farmer—>Transportation Company—>Freight Forwarder—>Starbucks Warehouse—>Retailer—>Customer
One thing that I noticed in this video is that rather then fly the coffee beans, they are sent by ship. As I said before I am not sure if this is how Starbucks’ beans are actually transported or not, but it is in fact a very good idea. Once the coffee beans are cooked they become relatively imperishable, so Starbucks, or whoever is in possession of the beans at the time, could save money by sending the beans via ships rather then planes.
Even if you don’t look at the technical side of this commercial it is still just a really cool commercial.
What do you think it would be like if Starbucks really had a pull supply chain?
