After almost two years of negotiation, Starbucks finally opened at SFU, offering students an opportunity to order their grande-extra-hot-soy-latte-with-extra-foam while on the mountain. The new coffee shop has opened its doors in MBC, replacing the old SFU Security and Parking Services offices.

The Starbucks at SFU is also one of the largest in the country covering over 1900 square feet of space and able to seat 80 customers indoors and 25 on the patio.

“This is meant to be a social space,” said Mark McLaughlin, executive director of SFU Ancillary Services. Designed with students in mind, Starbucks will remain open after Bennett library closes on weekend nights to give them another place to study.

There are abundant power and USB charging outlets, as well as a wall that has been reserved for contemporary arts students, where they will be able to create a mural, to go up in November. McLaughlin said that it would likely be temporary, chalk-based art that can be rotated every few months.

The initial setback for the SFU location concerned Starbucks’ reluctance to include fair trade coffee and espresso on the menu — though they introduced it across Europe in 2010 — it took two years of negotiations for the chain to accept SFU’s terms.

Fair trade options will only continue to be offered as long as they sell well.

 

McLaughlin knew student concerns, in general, transcended those of price or brand; he tried to focus on options like fair trade — a preference that is taking off at campuses across Canada. An SFU survey by the Dining Services Committee indicated that 77 per cent of respondents felt that fair trade coffee was at least somewhat important to them.

“In two or three years, most campuses are going to switch to fair trade too,” said McLaughlin. “So we basically told Starbucks that they weren’t going to reach these audiences if they didn’t step up.”

While there are no plans to offer fair trade coffee at any upcoming or existing branches, Girotto said that Starbucks will be paying close attention to the pilot project at SFU. McLaughlin added that the SFU location was offering fair trade options on a conditional basis: it will only continue to be offered as long as it sells well.

Starbucks will offer two fair trade options, one of their espressos and the dark roast coffee, both certified by the company’s own C.A.F.E. Practices as well as Fair Trade Canada.

Fair Trade Canada’s communications director, Michael Zelmer, explained that fair trade certification is a third-party system that focuses specifically on improving the terms of trade and price for disadvantaged farmers and workers, while including strong labour and sustainable agriculture standards and processes.

“C.A.F.E. Practices is a scoring system Starbucks developed to measure coffee producers on social responsibility and environmental indicators. It then takes that score and somehow combines it with its purchasing decisions, with a higher score presumably increasing the likelihood they’d buy from a particular source and possibly price, we don’t know,” explained Zelmer.

He continued, “The focus of the standards is exclusively on the performance of the farmers themselves, not the interaction between Starbucks and the farmers.”

McLaughlin said that the lowest price that can be paid under Fair Trade Canada’s certification no matter how low the market price goes is US$1.40/lb. This is compared with a current industry average of US$1.15/lb. However, even when prices are high internationally, farmers can still get very low prices when they have limited options in terms of market access.

SFU was designated a fair trade campus in 2012, meaning that all on-campus coffee shops must offer a fair trade option; which is why requiring Starbucks to offer such choices was so important.

Franchises, like Tim Hortons, are exempt, but that doesn’t mean they’re off the hook. McLaughlin said that the Dining Services Committee has been pressuring them to offer fair trade coffee, but have not received a favourable response.

In the meantime, SFU is not allowing Tim Hortons to open another store on campus until they acquiesce. According to Girotto, there were no plans on the table to offer fair trade coffee at their other Canadian locations.