To Our Valued Customers,
On January 5, we sent you an e-mail describing our new Black Apron Exclusives(TM) Aged Sumatra Lot 523 coffee. The message conveyed how proud we are of this new coffee, but did not address our deep sadness and concern for the tremendous loss of life and devastation in the recent natural disaster in Southeast Asia.
We would like to apologize for any unintentional offense caused by that e-mail.
The text of the e-mail was developed this past summer, several months prior to the coffee's scheduled release. Starbucks has the utmost respect for the people and places that bring us great coffees, and the text was intended to reflect that respect.
As soon as we learned of the disaster in Southeast Asia, we immediately began working on our relief efforts. Starbucks made an initial pledge of $100,000 to aid the relief efforts, and we are also donating $2 from the sale of each pound of our Sumatra coffees, and $1 from the sale of each half-pound of Sumatra and Aged Sumatra coffees, in all North American stores to CARE (for more information, please visit http://www.care.org/starbucksgift). We anticipate that over the next few months, our efforts will raise more than $1 million. Starbucks is undertaking several additional programs, the details of which are available at our website.
However, in our efforts to respond to the tragedy, we did not address some of the marketing materials that had already been created. The e-mail that you received did not reflect our relief efforts to date. Once again, we would like to apologize for any unintentional offense this may have caused.
Sincerely,
The Starbucks Coffee team
