In the field of coffee services , there are two mainly companies around the world that are dominating the coffee shop market . These two competitors are Starbucks and Costa Coffee , we can also call them backbones of this trade . However , these two companies are actually more than competitors and each one of them have its own special services , benefits or even work environment which mean they’re total different .
Starbucks was founded in 1971(Hanbury, 2019), by three people who are Jerry Baldwin, Zev Siegl and Gordon Bowker. The first Starbucks store was in Seattle’s Pike Place Market. Today its annual revenue are estimated on $ 26.1B , and it has about 291,000 workers. As well as it has over 30,000 stores in 80 countries , 9 of them are in Morocco , they are spreading over five cities Tangier, Kenitra, Rabat, Casablanca and Marrakech. The present CEO of it is Kevin Johnson. The headquarter location of it is Utah Avenue South, Seattle, Washington, United . (UKEssays.com, 2017) In addition, Starbucks has used a lot of slogans as way for marketing , it used to use different slogans depending on the season of year and also depending to the target audience , which it mean that it doesn’t have an official slogan, and instead of it they have a mission statement. (Masud and Waiz, n.d.) (Starbucks Coffee Company, n.d.)
Costa coffee has appeared on the same year when Starbuck was founded (Hanbury, 2019), but in a different location which is London, England. The founders were Sergio and Bruno Costa. On it beginning Costa Coffee was wholesale business , and lately they opened their first store on Vauxhall Bridge Road, London . It annual revenues reaches $ 2B less than its competitor Starbucks(Owler, 2019). The number of Costa employee is around 10,000. It actual CEO is Dominic Paul(Tuffery, 2019).Its slogan is Costa. For coffee lovers is the main slogan of this company.
However, the both companies (Starbucks & Costa Coffee) are the top brands in coffee market, they are competing on the same field . And each one has a specific organizational culture that is used to lead the business and achieve more success .
For example , under Starbucks mission statement that is “ To inspire and nurture the human spirit – one person, one cup and one neighborhood at a time. ”, its organizational culture focused on 4 mainly features which are:
Servant leadership (“employees first”): Starbucks company believes on the importance of taking care of employees. Cause making labours satisfied will lead directly to the client satisfaction. This feature has applied by former president of Starbucks, Howard Behar (FERGUSON, 2019).
Collaboration and communication: By encouraging to effective communication and collaboration between customers and labours to fulfil orders , this feature help company to improve the client experience , and privilege the company reputation in the eyes of clients and employees, due to what benefits the clients get through the communication and collaboration (FERGUSON, 2019).
Openness: It one of the best politic that make Starbuck a great company , and it mention the open forums which are created to break the barrier between supervisors and employees . Its goals is about facilitate the operation of asking question communicating for employees , in order to discuss the issues and providing the ideas to develop the business and increase the innovation of company products. The idea of open forums was provided also by former President Behar (FERGUSON, 2019).
Inclusion and diversity: It’s considered one of Starbucks policy that fight any kind of discrimination based on gender, race, ethnicity, sexual orientation, religion, age, cultural backgrounds, life experiences, thoughts, and ideas. This policy has helped the company to create positive engagement and actions towards the customers and labours as well as that it helped to gain more clients by making them feel comfortable and free on Starbucks cafes (FERGUSON, 2019).
In other hand , there is Costa Coffee which it mission is to save the world from mediocre coffee. The Costa Coffee key of success is based on the talent management as it claims. And it has a different organizational culture compared to its competitor Starbucks on which it is focused on :
Giving the best experience to the customers : In overall , Costa Coffee customers experience seem more luxury than its competitor. Such as giving the best coffee taste and service to clients with different bakery services depending on the country(Longman, n.d.).
The importance of understanding their cost to serving on each country : Although that Costa Coffee experience is more luxurious than Starbucks, they choose prises wisely as much as possible in order to reach a larger group of customers (Longman, n.d.).
Ensuring about the employees job : They sensitise the employees about their hard works that is leading to rise and improve the turnovers services (Longman, n.d.).
Anti slavery : This is one of main successful factor of organization culture to be against any kind of slavery towards its clients or even labours. What it drive the company create a rich culture environment of clients (Paul, 2019).
These were fair trade approaches that are used by the top competitors on coffee shop field, they both use different approaches but they still in rival with each others .
Inside the competition frame , each company has independent and singular terms of innovation and expansion plans. Cause in business world each firm search for increase the revenues and expand further, and the way varies depending on company goals and visions. In addition about the expansion plans , the both companies are looking to expand in China market, it’s a common top goal from them for the future. So the next efforts and focus will be targeting China market due to its population that is about 1,4 B people (Forbes, 2019) (QSRMedia Asia, 2018), which means a lot of opportunities and revenues. There are innovation plans which are described on effective strategies and tactics the follow to lead the world market. And here , are two of some innovation plans that are used by Starbucks and Costa Coffee:
Investing in new techs (Robotics) Starbucks : Due to the increasing of labours problems such as the availability, cost or even the speed , it becomes necessary to find alternative solutions with high performance at a low-cost. Starbucks found a way to invest new techs to covers the weakness sides on its business that caused by the human labour(Foodservice Consultants Society International, 2019
Investing in the future – Starbucks : With an investment fund that it did . And it is in order to update their stores space, due to the increasing of customer power purchasing (Foodservice Consultants Society International, 2019).
Costa Collect – Costa Coffee: This is the most creative option has a coffee shop ever made on which it allows you to an advanced payment at store from your phone , avoiding with it queue (Hanbury, 2018)
Costa’s Eco Pod : Costa has launched it first eco coffee shop that is friendly to the environment . It’s special building that was built with innovative energy saving tech(The Coffee Shop Innovation Expo, n.d.).
Personally , I prefer Costa Coffee than Starbucks due to its special services that are focusing on giving a luxurious experience to the customer in all aspects such as products, services or even the store design . And I’d like to work for Costa Coffee also, because I believe that working for it is more advantageous than its competitor . It’s obvious directly the expansion of each one and how much is stores number they have or they reached . I choose cause I believe in my skills and qualification to help the firm to expand more and increase it revenues. To my expectations I can say that Costa could pay a high salary for the benefits I could bring to it, especially if I made a big effect for it, no matter how it could be more challenged . In job opportunities , I always make sure that the firm where I’m going to work respect some factors which are :
The way this firm treat its employees , cause I have a faith that it’s important to treat the labour in good way to help them rise up their performance and produce more
The benefits that are shared with employees such as earning rates, promotions given to employees or even the people you will meeting.
Further more, from my really experience I had tasted both firms products and I preferred Costa Coffee to its product that are tasty more than Starbucks products . Also I like the Costa plans strategies it’s considering to lead experience and delivering the best for clients.
