Starbucks Corporation is an American multinational chain of coffeehouses and roastery reserves headquartered in Seattle, Washington. It was founded in 1971 by Jerry Baldwin, Zev Siegl, and Gordon Bowker at Seattle's Pike Place Market initially as a coffee bean wholesaler. Starbucks was converted into a coffee shop serving espresso-based drinks under the ownership of Howard Schultz, who was chief executive officer from 1986 to 2000 and led the aggressive expansion of the franchise across the West Coast of the United States.
Flavia is a hot beverage system, released on March 8th 2005. The system prepares single servings of coffee, tea, and hot chocolate drinks. The brand was owned by Mars Drinks, a division of Mars, Incorporated until October 1, 2018, when Lavazza purchased Mars’s coffee units.
Stumptown Coffee Roasters is a coffee roaster and retailer based in Portland, Oregon, United States. The chain's flagship café and roastery opened in 1999. Three other cafes, a roastery and a tasting annex have since opened in Portland, as well as locations in Seattle, New York, and Los Angeles,. Stumptown is owned by Peet's Coffee, which in turn is owned by JAB Holding Company. The company was an early innovator with cold brew coffee in nitro cans and have continued to develop other cold brew product innovations.
Gimme! Coffee is a coffee roaster and third-wave coffee shop, based in New York, US, with espresso bars in Ithaca and Trumansburg. In response to the COVID-19 pandemic, Gimme! in 2020 closed the Manhattan and Brooklyn-based locations, and began an Ithaca-area delivery service. Gimme! Coffee also has a wholesale service that caters to coffee and espresso establishments. In January 2020, Colleen Anunu replaced founder Kevin Cuddeback as CEO after he had served 20 years in the role; Anunu then made the company into a worker-owned cooperative, which it remains in July 25, 2022. Gimme says that it forms relationships with farmers who grow coffee; farmers may receive a price premium which can help them improve their operations.
Barista is a chain of espresso bars and cafes that operates in the Indian subcontinent. It is headquartered in Gurugram, India, and maintains outlets across India, and in other regional countries such as Sri Lanka, and Maldives. It is the second oldest coffee house chain in India and is currently India's second-largest coffee chain with over 425 cafes as of March 2024. It also sells a number of FMCG products through Modern & General retail stores across multiple locations.
Intelligentsia Coffee is an American coffee roasting company and retailer based in Chicago, Illinois. Founded in 1995 by Doug Zell and Emily Mange, Intelligentsia is considered a major representative of third wave coffee. In 2015, Peet's Coffee & Tea acquired a majority stake in the company.
Luigi Lavazza S.p.A., shortened and stylized as LAVAZZA, is an Italian manufacturer of coffee products. Founded in Turin in 1895 by Luigi Lavazza, it was initially run from a small grocery store at Via San Tommaso 10. The business is currently administered by the third and fourth generations of the Lavazza family.
Just Us! Coffee Roasters Co-op is a Canadian importer of fair trade coffee, tea, sugar, and chocolate. Based in Grand Pré, Nova Scotia, Just Us! products are sold throughout Canada, typically in shops specializing in fair trade goods such as Ten Thousand Villages. Their motto is “People and the Planet before Profits”.
The history of union busting in the United States dates back to the Industrial Revolution in the 19th century. The Industrial Revolution produced a rapid expansion in factories and manufacturing capabilities. As workers moved from farms to factories, mines and other hard labor, they faced harsh working conditions such as long hours, low pay and health risks. Children and women worked in factories and generally received lower pay than men. The government did little to limit these conditions. Labor movements in the industrialized world developed and lobbied for better rights and safer conditions. Shaped by wars, depressions, government policies, judicial rulings, and global competition, the early years of the battleground between unions and management were adversarial and often identified with aggressive hostility. Contemporary opposition to trade unions known as union busting started in the 1940s, and continues to present challenges to the labor movement. Union busting is a term used by labor organizations and trade unions to describe the activities that may be undertaken by employers, their proxies, workers and in certain instances states and governments usually triggered by events such as picketing, card check, worker organizing, and strike actions. Labor legislation has changed the nature of union busting, as well as the organizing tactics that labor organizations commonly use.
Third-wave coffee is a movement in coffee marketing emphasizing high quality. Beans are typically sourced from individual farms and are roasted more lightly to bring out their distinctive flavors. Though the term was coined in 1999, the approach originated in the 1970s, with roasters such as the Coffee Connection.
Seattle is regarded as a world center for coffee roasting and coffee supply chain management. Related to this, many of the city's inhabitants are coffee enthusiasts; the city is known for its prominent coffee culture and numerous coffeehouses.
Starbucks, an American coffee company and coffeehouse chain, is the subject of multiple controversies. Public and employee criticism against the company has come from around the world, including a wide range issues from tax avoidance in Europe, anti-competitive practices in the United States, human rights issues in multiple countries and labor issues involving union busting, questions about pay equity and ethics in partnerships in Africa.
The Harvard Graduate Students Union (HGSU), officially known as Harvard Graduate Students Union United Auto Workers (HGSU-UAW), is a labor union representing graduate students, teaching assistants, and other student employees at Harvard University. The bargaining unit comprises about 5,000 student employees, including graduate students working as research assistants and teaching fellows as well as several hundred undergraduate students holding teaching positions. Contract negotiations with the university are scheduled to begin in Fall 2018. HGSU is affiliated with the United Auto Workers labor union, whose 400,000 members include 45,000 graduate students and 30,000 academic workers.
Some warehouse workers of Amazon, the largest American e-commerce retailer with 750,000 employees, have organized for workplace improvements in light of the company's scrutinized labor practices and stance against unions. Worker actions have included work stoppages and have won concessions including increased pay, safety precautions, and time off. There are unionized Amazon workers in both the United States and Europe.
The Amazon Labor Union (ALU) is a labor union specifically for Amazon workers, created on April 20, 2021. On April 1, 2022, the Amazon workers at a warehouse in Staten Island, JFK8, backed by the ALU became the first unionized Amazon workers recognized by the National Labor Relations Board. In June 2024 the union became affiliated with Teamsters.
As of June 2024, over 10,000 workers at over 400 Starbucks stores in at least 40 states in the United States have voted to unionize, primarily with Workers United. As of March 2023 none have yet enacted a collective bargaining agreement. This unionization effort started at a store in Buffalo, New York. About a third of Starbucks' Chilean workforce is already unionized, as well as 450 workers in New Zealand and eight stores in Canada. The longest Starbucks strike lasted 64 days, took place in Brookline, Massachusetts in September 2022 and resulted in the unionization of the employees at that location.
Victrola Coffee Roasters is a coffee roasting company with multiple locations in Seattle, Washington.
Storyville Coffee is a coffee company operating in the Seattle metropolitan area, in the U.S. state of Washington.
