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Thought Leadership
Starbucks brews a blockchain-based
supply chain with Microsoft
By Lucas Mearian, courtesy Computerworld
Starbucks is working with Microsoft to develop a blockchain-based supply chain tracking
system and mobile app that will allow customers to track the supply chain journey of the
beans they buy and the coffee they drink.
IN MARCH, Starbucks announced a ‘digital food’s journey from farm to store shelf. For
transparency plan’ that would let it verify its example, IBM’s blockchain-based Food Trust
coff ee beans as 100 percent ethically and blockchain network is used by more than two
sustainably sourced. Last year, Starbucks worked dozen food retailers and suppliers. Food suppliers
with more than 380,000 coff ee farms to ensure add QR or barcodes to shipping labels that
ethical sourcing. However, digital real-time can be scanned and entered into a blockchain
traceability will allow customers to know more database, which becomes a transparent ledger for
about their coff ee beans, the company said. all participants to see as shipments travel along
the supply chain. Pharmaceutical wholesalers and
other fi rms have also been using blockchain cloud
services to authenticate their products and avoid
counterfeit drugs. Jewellery and gem suppliers
are also using blockchain to ensure their stones
are ethically sourced and not part of the blood
diamond trade, which uses slave labour in war-
torn regions of Africa to mine precious gems.
“Perhaps even more important and
diff erentiating are the potential benefi ts for
coff ee farmers to know where their beans go
after they sell them. Starbucks is innovating
ways to trace the journey that its coff ee makes
from farm to cup – and to connect the people
who drink it with the people who grow it,” the
coff ee chain said in a blog post.
At the Microsoft Build 2019 conference,
the coff ee company announced its ‘bean to Starbucks did not detail when the blockchain-
cup’ programme. It uses Microsoft’s Azure- based supply chain and mobile app would go live,
based blockchain service, which creates a but it did say it’s currently interviewing coff ee
transparent electronic ledger over which supply farmers in Costa Rica, Colombia and Rwanda,
chain participants can input transactional data. “…learning more about their stories, their
Combined with a user interface and mobile knowledge and their needs in order to determine
application, the technology will allow Starbucks how digital traceability can best benefi t them.”
customers to trace the journey of coff ee beans “We’re forging new ground here, so we’re
from the time a grower packages them to the excited to report more in the coming months,”
time they hit the coff ee chain’s counters. The Michelle Burns, Starbucks Senior Vice President of
mobile app will show customers information Global Coff ee & Tea, said in the post. “While high
about where their packaged coff ee comes from, quality, handcrafted beverages are so important,
where it was grown and what Starbucks is doing it’s the stories, the people, the connections,
to support farmers in those locations. It will also the humanity behind that coff ee that inspires
include where and when the coff ee was roasted, everything we do. This kind of transparency off ers
associated tasting notes and other details. customers the chance to see that the coff ee they
Starbucks is among a growing number of enjoy from us is the result of many people caring
produce retailers to let customers trace their deeply.” •
4 June 2019 | Logistics News
