Starbucks discontinuing organic milk

Starbucks has announced that they will be discontinuing organic milk; of course some people are up-in-arms over it, but what does it mean for the customers and the company as a whole?

• While organic milk is being discontinued, Starbucks has completed the process of ensuring all of the "normal" milk is rBST free, which I think is what most people are worried about anyway.


• During my six or so years at Starbucks (at 7 different stores in 2 states), I personally made no more than 3 beverages using the certified organic milk (thats about 0.0001% of the total beverages I made during that time by my estimates).


• The organic milk that Starbucks offered was asepticaly packaged (or as they call it here in Germany "H-Milk") which means it was ultra-super-insanely Pasturized then packaged into a sterile container so that it can sit on the shelf for a year, unrefridgerated (until you open it, then it lasts about a week in the fridge). This process makes milk that tastes, well, not as good.


• One estimate I have read states that between 50-70% of the "normal" milk Starbucks uses is organic, it's just not certified as such (although this is probably impossible to actually prove).
  

There was possibly a bit of a chicken-and-egg problem in that the organic milk that Starbucks used tasted gross, so no one ordered it, which meant there was no demand for it, which meant there was no reason to move to non-asepticaly packaged organic milk which is WAY more expensive. And the cost of organic milk and low anticipated demand is why they chose to use asepticaly packaged milk in the first place.

Some people have asserted that Starbucks should go to using only organic milk then, and that rBST-free is not enough. It is my opinion, though, that most of these critics don't go to Starbucks anyway - it's usually the anti-Starbucks-no-matter-what-they-do crowd that says such things. For the people that do visit Starbucks, going all organic would probably mean (this is an educated guess here) a 10-20% price increase. Considering the state of the US economy at the moment I don't think anyone wants that.

Some argue that ${localCoffeeShop} can offer all organic milk, so Starbucks should be able to also. This kind of agility is what makes local coffee shops succeed (and even thrive) even when there is a Starbucks right next door; it's very difficult for a company to be both large and agile. Starbucks can be agile in some respects but in general its fairly slow to make changes - especially ones that impact such a core component of their business.

Additionally, many Starbucks simply do not have access to a reliable source of large quantities of fresh organic milk - a normal sized Starbucks can go through something like 100 gallons (380 liters) of milk a day. When you put 200 of them into one city the amount of milk required adds up really fast... In an ideal world, all Starbucks would use a local source of organic milk, but I do not at all believe the needed supply for this is available... it took, what, 5 years just to get all of the dairies Starbucks uses to commit to being rBST-free.

Ultimately, though, considering that Starbucks is currently entering a phase of getting rid of some of the least ordered products to trim the line-up a bit (Almond syrup and Creme Light beverages are going away too), organic milk, in its current form, is an obvious choice for this sort of cut.

If you really want and/or need organic milk, the soy milk that Starbucks uses (if I remember correctly) is certified organic. And if you can't and/or won't drink soy, then chances are there is a small coffee shop in your town that offers fresh organic milk, which is way better than the aseptic stuff anyway.