Starbucks' revamped food program sparks lawsuit from longtime bakery supplier

Crestone Group in San Diego learned in February that it's not part of Starbucks' new food program -- tastier and healthier offerings are promised -- and last month sued Starbucks, saying the coffee company owes it more than $2 million for breaching supplier agreements. Crestone also alleges that Starbucks has used its proprietary recipes in a new frozen baked-goods program. || Read "Starbucks' new food program shaves costs, sparks lawsuit from longtime supplier" || Muffin maker forced to cut staff, reinvent itself after being dropped by Starbucks

Comments

[Coffee Soldier]

I'm in a frozen store and love it. I've worked at both types of stores and frozen is much easier to manage. You can keep a back stock of a day's extra worth of pastry and pull them as needed rather then trying to guess. In a fresh store you have a slow day or snowy weather and suddenly you've got 20 blueberry muffins to markout. In the frozen you just keep pulling until need be as long as you are responsible with it.

This article makes it seem like all stores will be frozen. Interesting...wondering where the freezers will go in the tiny little stores in the cities and then will all stores go to 3 day or 1 day a week delivery?? I wouldn't be surprised. It's much cheaper.

[rollseyes]

SB used to use a local distributor for it's pastries in the Pittsburgh PA market, Incredible Foods. They dropped them for LoPresti in Ohio, and Incredible Foods closed their doors because of it.

[JC]

This might explain why the last croissant I had tasted like a hot dog bun. I repeat, my LAST croissant.

[(former) FLA SM]

Having formerly run a frozen store, I can tell you, frozen is definitely less than optimal. Often times, we would receive our product half-thawed because the pastries (and frozen bananas) were delivered in a truck that wasn't a freezer. Then, the half-thawed product would go back in the freezer only to be later thawed again before being served. Gross. Clearly not as appealing as fresh.

[LK]

Sorry to break it to ya, but even "local" suppliers, and the daily delivery service supplies all of their pastry fully frozen. This is a standard of production across the board in the bakery industry which caters to high volume customers. Don't believe it? Check the production dates on pastry box labels and you can see, much of the pastry you are packing the pastry case with was produced months ago.

Actually, I would support this initiative and say that when dealing with product on such a large scale with consistency and freshness in mind. Flash freezing pastry immediately after production is the way to go.

I agree with Coffee Soldier, it would much prefer to manage the frozen food myself, rather than have to deal with a daily order and delivery system. So much easier to manage costs .

[BOSTON STARBUCKS REBEL]

Starbucks Shared Planets only cares about small plants and people far away. Who cares about supporting the local economy?

[BOSTON STARBUCKS REBEL]

Before you know it, they'll be outsourcing our pastries from India or Mexico.

[nematoad]

ok i am confused we just got new lemon loaf and others are these being redone again?

[blueberry scone lover]

all I know is, I stopped going to starbucks awhile back after one too many scones that were dry and hard. I just stopped in the other day, and got one- WOW what a difference. The new blueberry scone is WAY better than the old one. Don't know if it's changing, but I already went back for another today (not surprisingly, they were all out).

[SBUX has soul'd out]

I used to love the raspberry scones. I had one Sunday that tasted like cardboard. No more!! What happened to the fruit. And the blueberry and cinnamon scones looked awful. I know that SBUX food isn't particularly healthy, but gosh darn it, if I am going to blow a days worth of fat and sugar on a scone it had better be worth it...that so wasn't!

[Argentius]

I used to be a frozen / perishables manager at a natural foods store.

We did a brisk business in "specialty" breads that arrived frozen.

It really isn't great. It works if you have no local bakeries which cater to your special needs or tastes, (sprouted kamut, anyone?) and I am ALL FOR dropping HFCS from the line, and supporting only bakeries that can make that change, but, really.

Frozen is not the way to go.

Thumbs down.

[Bux]

In my 2+ years at the 'bucks both the quality of the pastries and the delivery system has been very sub-standard compared with all the other products and suppliers of the store. Our food products have definitely been our weak point. I think Starbucks should be suing them for lack of quality. Maybe now that we've slowed down our growth we can work on the quality of products again and the quality of our suppliers using more local ones would be great!

[Debbie]

Hugely disappointed by the scone I just got. The Cranberry Orange Scone (which was covered in unhealthy frosting - that absolutely "made" the scone) has been replaced with a scone that has a frosting drizzle that does nothing to augment the taste and causes the dryness of the scone to shine through. Boo!

[me]

scones are not moist pastries no matter where you get them from! people that complain about dry scones apparently want a cake. scones are dry. the sbux ones are sometimes more moist than traditional scones.

scones are not cake! learn the difference