I believe that profit sharing is a very good initiative for Starbucks Coffee to maintain in the future. The main reason being that it fits with Howard Schultz’s vision of Starbucks being more than just a place where you can get a simple 50¢ cup of coffee. Profit sharing with employees sends a message that the employees are more than just the cog that makes everything function and sell. They are actually partners in the business that have their own specific roles in helping the business grow and prosper.

Aside from fitting with the founding CEO’s vision, profit sharing also can motivate employees to perform better because they know their bonuses or dividends will increase if the business’ overall profits have. Finally, profit sharing can foster brand loyalty from employees and increase employee retention rates. Meaning that less money can be spent on training new hires and the company can stay afloat without having to go public and sell stocks to outside investors.

I believe that Starbucks should continue the employee profit sharing initiative because more and more millennials are graduating from college and mastering social media, meaning that there is a lot of potential for finding new talent for all levels of the company. Seeing as how working in the food and beverage industry in a non-senior management role for the long term is looked down upon by some, Starbucks will need a way to recruit talent and retain their skills once their originally desired jobs begin opening up.

Implementing this in new Starbucks locations should happen by opening up new franchise locations in college towns in the U.S., Canada, and the U.K. University students often frequent bookstores and cafés to get their assignments completed, so they are often already familiar with the Starbucks brand. Meaning that if recruiters pitched new jobs and employee profit sharing at job fairs on college campuses, they would be able to fill various staff positions by the time that new franchises open up in December or May (the end of most Fall and Spring semesters in these countries).

I think that out of the three competitors of Starbucks listed, Costa Coffee should be the one to implement or expand employee profit sharing in its corporate policy. This is because Costa Coffee has overtaken Starbucks as the top coffee brand in the United Kingdom before and has the potential to grow in other large English speaking markets if there is more brand awareness and loyalty dedicated to the company. Often, employees who are expecting to be with an employer long term will market their employer by word of mouth to their friends and family in an effort to either impress them or invite them to make purchases and help grow the business of the location they are currently working at. If Costa Coffee implemented or expanded employee profit sharing, it can be hypothesized that the desire to carry out word of mouth marketing employees would increase because they are now viewed as part owners who have an actual stake in the company’s success and not just an expendable part of the corporate machine.

Also, if Costa Coffee shares some of the profits with their employees, it will show that the company is exercising reasonable care with its employees. If potential consumers can blatantly see that Costa Coffee cares about the long term well-being of their employees, customers may assume that the company will care about their personal satisfaction and experience when purchasing goods from the company as well. If the customers perceive that Costa Coffee’s customer service is just as good or better than Starbucks’, then some of them may even convert to primarily drinking and ordering Costa Coffee’s products over sampling Starbucks’.