Coffee Giant Starbucks Will Use Blockchain For Beans Tracking

Coffee giant Starbucks is turning to blockchain for easier bean tracking but also for the farmers that will be able to verify their beans ended up in the right place. In our blockchain news today, we find out more.

The US coffee giant will now use blockchain technology so now all of the coffee lovers in America and track their Starbucks bean from the farms that are growing in. the company is deploying the new blockchain-based app across all stores in America and allows customers to trace the purchase back to the farmers. The consumers have become increasingly interested in known where the food comes from and how it was grown as they are becoming more conscious about the ongoing issue with climate change.

Just launched: Meet the people and see the places behind your bag of Starbucks coffee with our new Digital Traceability tool. Simply scan or enter the batch code of any bag of whole bean coffee from U.S. stores to get started: https://t.co/ihvA0Emxyb

— Starbucks News (@StarbucksNews) August 20, 2020

Because of this, one of the world’s biggest companies in the world has to become more transparent about where the products come from and blockchain can just do that. The new tool will help customers verify a package that says it comes from Colombia let’s say but it actually came from another place, giving them true information. The app is powered by the Microsoft enterprise blockchain services which will allow Starbucks to share the traceability data with the biggest coffee-shop chain in the world.

Starting Tuesday, the customers that will buy coffee at Starbucks in the United States will be able to use a code on the bags to find out where the beans come from, where were they roasted and they will even get tips from baristas, according to Michelle Burns who is the senior vice president of global coffee and tea sales. Burnes added:

 “That allowed us to have the foundation to now build a user-friendly, consumer-driven tool that certainly provides that trust and confidence to our customers that we know where all of our coffee comes from.”

The report added that the move came as the younger generation started to pay a premium for sustainable and small-batch products which led to an increase in craft roasters over the past few years, where the coffee is roasted on location instead of factories. Starbucks is not the first coffee roaster to go into blockchain. Back in 2019, the J.M. Smucker Co. and Jacobs Douwe Egberts also joined the blockchain initiative and even developed a partnership with IBM. However, tracing coffee is not an easy job. This means that roasteries such as Starbucks can only track beans now up to a country level while other single-origin products can be traced to the farmers.