The troubled years of Starbucks! Complaints abound when the price of Starbucks menu goes up again in 2018.

Professional coffee knowledge exchange more coffee bean information please follow the coffee workshop (Wechat official account cafe_style)

Source: China Economic Network

Recently, the global coffee chain giant Starbucks has launched a large-scale price increase, Moneyish reported. It is clear that consumers do not welcome the price increase and there are a lot of complaints.

Starbucks announced Tuesday that it has raised the price of ordinary freshly brewed coffee sold in most of its US stores by 10-20 cents. Now, after the price increase, Starbucks'12-ounce "medium" coffee has now risen to $1.95-$2.15. At the same time, apart from coffee, the prices of other items in Starbucks stores, such as popular lattes, cappuccinos, cold drinks, iced coffee and other specialty drinks, remain unchanged. This is the third time that Starbucks has raised its price in the United States in three years.

In the past year, Starbucks has raised the price of its products by 1%, by 2%. At the time, Starbucks pointed out that the move was aimed at keeping the company abreast of industry changes and domestic inflation.

In 2016, Starbucks announced a price increase two days after the results of the US presidential election were announced, mainly for iced coffee, cold drinks and baked goods, with a general price increase of 10-30 cents.

2018 is by no means a calm year for Starbucks.

On the 4th, Starbucks announced that its 64-year-old executive chairman, Howard Schultz, will step down later this month, ending his 36-year career at Starbucks. In an interview, Schultz admitted that he might consider running for president of the United States. Schultz has been in charge of Starbucks' huge growth for more than 30 years. In the 1980s, Starbucks had 11 stores. Today, the coffee giant has more than 28000 stores in 77 countries and a market capitalization of $78 billion. Starbucks shares have risen 21000% since they went public in 1992. Schultz currently owns 3 per cent of Starbucks and holds 37.8 million shares worth about $2.17 billion.

In April, two African-American men were refused to use the bathroom because they did not spend money at Starbucks, and the store manager called the police, who arrested them for trespassing and released them for lack of evidence. The incident attracted widespread attention, and Starbucks was given a reputation as "racist". In order to eliminate the impact of this incident, Starbucks suspended operations in New York and most of its stores across the United States in late May to strengthen anti-racial discrimination training for shop staff to avoid the recurrence of racial discrimination.

A Starbucks spokesman pointed out that the latest price increase had nothing to do with the company's full store closure for anti-racial discrimination education, and inflation was the main reason for the price increase.

In a statement to Fortune magazine, Starbucks wrote: "Starbucks will adjust prices according to the specific conditions of products and markets. Periodic price assessments allow us to strike a balance between profitable demand, providing quality goods to loyal customers and attracting new customers."

Although Starbucks gave what it thought was a good reason, American consumers did not "welcome" the price increase, instead complaining.

"Starbucks is already charging too much for coffee," one female user wrote on Twitter.

Another user responded on Twitter: "Starbucks is raising the price of its coffee as if it were inexpensive."

Another user said on Twitter, "I think you've gone too far." Today, I spent more money on coffee than I spent on going to work by subway. It's time for us to say goodbye! " And @ Starbucks.

However, Starbucks is not the only company to announce a price increase recently. In March, global food giant General Mills announced that it would raise the prices of some of its foods in the coming months, mainly due to rising raw materials and transportation costs. Between April and November 2017, Chipotle, a fast-food chain, announced a 5 per cent increase in commodity prices in 55 per cent of its stores. Statistics show that Chipotle has more than 2200 stores.