Starbucks Deploys Blockchain System That Allows Customers to Trace Their Coffee Origin

Trust and transparency - the two most-important factors that help big brands develop meaningful relationships with customers have always stayed at the top of the game. Big global businesses are now tapping the blockchain technology form and trustworthy relationship with their customers.

Global coffee giant Starbucks has deployed a blockchain system that allows their customers to trace the origin of their coffee. Besides, Starbucks also allows farmers to be a part of the ecosystem, to see what happened to their coffee beans.

For this, Starbucks is leveraging Microsoft’s blockchain-based tool that tracks the entire coffee supply chain - right from the site where the coffee beans are harvested to the site where the final coffee brew is served hot.

The coffee beans purchased from the Starbucks outlets in the U.S. will feature a QR code scanning which customers can find their beans’ origins and also read brewing tips. Currently this toll is only available for coffee bags purchased through Starbucks outlets.

It isn’t available on every cup of coffee customers will buy nor is it available on the bags purchased outside. As per Bloomberg, Starbucks makes this traceability possible based on some intensive data collection done by the come over the last 10 years.

Besides, it also comes from its robust supply chain worldwide. Michelle Burns, Starbucks’ senior vice president of global coffee, tea and cocoa, said: "That allowed us to have the foundation to now build a user-friendly, consumer-driven tool that certainly provides that trust and confidence to our customers that we know where all of our coffee comes from”.

This new initiative from Starbucks is basically to address the rising number of sustainability-conscious young consumers. This has been a well-thought process since Starbucks already announced its “bean to cup” initiative back in 2018. Last year, the company entered a partnership with tech giant Microsoft.

Currently, it isn’t clear as to which specific Microsoft tool has Starbucks employed but this could be one of the BaaS tools from Microsoft’s Azure Blockchain Services.