Starbucks'"black apron" strategy

In the New World (600628, stock bar) mall, which is regarded as a landmark of Chongwenmen in Beijing, Starbucks and McCoffee are only 30 meters apart, as well as two COSTA restaurants and a Pacific Coffee (601099, stock bar) nearby. This is a microcosm of Starbucks' current situation, and it is difficult for this "mentor of Chinese coffee culture" to continue to monopolize China's chain coffee market.

In this fragrant coffee war, Starbucks' main competitors are Kashijia, which locates at the top end of the market, and McCoffee, which is relatively cheap and good in quality. After entering China in 2006, Kashijia said with ambition that it would have 2500 stores by 2018, taking 1/3 of the Chinese coffee chain market. McDonald's opened its first McCafe shop in China in early 2010 and plans to have more than 470 stores by the end of 2012, a figure that took 11 years for Starbucks China to reach.

At an investor conference in December 2012, Starbucks announced that it would expand against the trend during a recession. Its fastest expansion is still in China, which is expected to overtake Canada as its second-largest market in 2014, with 1500 stores in 2015. Competitors grab more than just market share. Paul Fran, chief China analyst at market research firm Mintel, believes that as other brands of coffee are also expanding, competition for experienced employees is intensifying, making it difficult to recruit high-quality staff.

Starbucks founder Howard Schultz stressed at the conference that he would expand in a "disciplined" manner and would not repeat the mistakes of "growing for growth's sake" from 2007 to 2008. At that time, Starbucks opened more than a thousand new stores every year, but it encountered the practical problem that individual stores could not be profitable. finally, Schultz had to come out again to carry out reform. The problem with Starbucks, he pointed out in a memo, is that it ignores the soul of Starbucks-providing an unparalleled customer experience. This means that the current "disciplined" expansion must be based on Starbucks' consistent "customer experience".

Obviously, it is very important to train more high-quality coffee talents. For example, the "coffee master" in a black apron is the most vivid example of the so-called "Starbucks experience". After months of training and certification, they can wear the "black apron" representing the title, while the average star barista wears a green apron. This is the most scarce position in Starbucks China. Currently, there are only 1800 coffee masters out of its 12000 store employees.

Starbucks China is already laying the groundwork for a new round of expansion-Starbucks China University launched on November 26, 2012. Previously, Starbucks China had a "Learning and Development Department" under the Human Resources Department, which focused more on training knowledge related to the retail industry. It is not subdivided to train shop assistants, managers, assistant managers and other different levels like Starbucks University. In the words of Fan Liyue, president of Starbucks China University, employees are called "partners." "We need a bigger platform, not only for partners to grow through training in the retail industry, but also for them to be more complete in areas such as leadership." He told Caijing Weekly that at this stage, both the size of Starbucks China and the number of employees have made the introduction of corporate universities a problem that has to be considered. "We feel that if we don't do it, it will be very bad for us."

According to Wang Jingying, president of Starbucks China, the mainland market is too large, like operating 35 Hong Kong markets and 40 Singapore markets at the same time. "it's changing every day," she told Caijing Weekly. "Chinese consumers' unique demand for food taste is also changing. Therefore, we have to keep up with these needs without sacrificing experience. In first-and second-tier cities, we also have to provide coffee education. "

When Wang Jingying took office a year and a half ago, Starbucks had 400 stores in China. Now it has 700, and it is expanding at a rate of almost 1.2 a day. Around the ambitious goal of 1500 stores, a Starbucks store generally needs 15 to 20 employees, one manager and one deputy manager, so the new stores need 12000 to 16000 staff and 1600 managers and deputy managers. They may all graduate from Starbucks China University in the future.

On November 26, 2012, Wang Jingying received congratulatory emails from Schultz himself and a number of senior executives from Seattle headquarters in the United States. "they attach great importance to the opening of Starbucks University, and I have arranged for many visiting professors in the United States to come to China to give lectures."

On the same day, Starbucks officially opened its 100th store in Beijing. This is an in-depth experience store that offers different services from other stores, such as the only fully manual coffee maker in Starbucks China, "hand-brewed coffee" with filter paper and filter cups, and lattes with flowers. The manual coffee machine is different from the automatic coffee machine, which integrates grinding, extraction and distillation, which requires a manual lever to adjust the water output and time, etc.; hand-brewing coffee allows customers to choose the taste of coffee individually. it takes up to 23 minutes to make a cup of black coffee instead of tens of seconds. Starbucks hopes to enhance the customer experience and maintain its position as a market leader. All these depend on the superb skill of the staff in the store, in fact, all the staff in this store are "black aprons".

"if we can't train our partners well, how can we ensure that they provide better service to our customers? There is no doubt that this must be done; on the other hand, we have a clear talent development strategy, which is consistent with the company's development strategy. " Fan Liyue said.

In the future, Starbucks will launch more than 200 training courses for employees at different levels. In addition to unified teaching in the training center, in order to enable more employees to learn faster, the school places a large part of the training content in stores and provides electronic distance training. Fan Liyue said that Starbucks will implement a talent reserve program in core key positions, providing customized training for reserve talents like special training classes, with an average training time of 27 hours per person.

In addition, Starbucks University has launched "partner professors" in China for the first time, who are "best practitioners" in coffee knowledge, culture and retail. The members of the school's expert committee also come from all over the world, and they will provide support and advice for the sustainable development of Starbucks Chinese University.

"the partner you see now may be the president of China in the future." Wang Jingying said in an interview with Caijing World Weekly, pointing to Starbucks employees next to her.