Starbucks to the rescue CEO offers solutions to problems government no longer can tackle

Backed by loyal legions of heavily caffeinated customers, Seattle-based Starbucks over the past two decades has planted its green-and-white logo on mall parking lots and Main Streets – sometimes twice in the same block – from Maine to California.

During the early years of conquest, Starbucks showed up everywhere to offer the middle-class masses their fix of its dark-roasted brew along with cushy couches, sparkling bathrooms and smooth jazz. Now the company is offering more than just pumpkin-spiced concoctions. It has its own fixes for the economy, the environment and the health care crisis.

Starbucks, and its customers, used to look to the government to handle these kinds of matters. But faith in political institutions is collapsing, which gives Starbucks, a company never short on self-importance, the opening it needs.

Earlier this month, chief executive Howard Schultz announced a new customer-financed economic stimulus package. This is only the latest in a long line of light-blueish foreign and domestic policies rolled out by Schultz in the past few years. All of them are aimed at making the United States, and the world, a better place for sipping lattes. Welcome to Starbucks USA.

“Love What You Do,” read the sign on the door of a Starbucks on Chicago’s Michigan Avenue in 2007. It introduced Matt, a square-jawed, early-40-something regional manager with 15 years of service to the company. Under his picture, it continued: “Like a good cup of Sumatra, a job at Starbucks is likely to make you feel warm and inspired. It’s a great pleasure to connect with people.”

But it probably wasn’t Matt’s story that got prospective “partners” – the word Starbucks uses for its workers – to fill out an application. It was the last line on the poster that pushed many of them through the door: “With the health benefits we offer you can feel good about your future.”

From Schultz’s earliest days with the company, health care was what made Starbucks USA different from most other service-oriented corporate nations in America. McDonald’s didn’t offer many of its workers health benefits, and neither did Walmart. As Bill and Hillary Clinton were trying to get their health care bill passed in 1994, they leaned on Schultz, like a visiting head of state, for advice.

Schultz at one point pushed for the government to take over health care, pointing out that his company spent more on medical coverage for its workers than it did on coffee beans. Even with some stockholders grumbling about the costs, Schultz remains resolute: Starbucks will offer part-time workers– and that’s just about everyone who works in its coffee shops – access to health coverage.

This is the essence of the social contract in Starbucks USA and the anchor of its highly valued reputation as a corporate do-gooder.

The company has long made public pledges to contribute positively to the environment, even setting up an Environmental Protection Agency-like Environmental Affairs division. Over the years the company has, among other things, donated money to the Earth Day Coalition to raise environmental awareness and altered its energy policy, starting to purchase alternative and wind-generated fuels.

Looking for ways to lessen its environmental footprint even more, Starbucks cut the size of its napkins and the thickness of its plastic bags. That move keeps 1.8 million pounds of waste out of landfills each year, according to the company. Recently, Starbucks opened a green-certified store in downtown Seattle with tables made from reclaimed wood and the floor and ceiling preserved from existing buildings.

But the biggest environmental hurdle at Starbucks is the 2 billion cups and lids it goes through each year. Working with the Environmental Defense Fund, Starbucks developed new containers and sleeves made from recycled materials. By using these greener products, the company annually saves 78,000 trees, enough energy to supply 640 homes with electricity for a year and enough water to fill 71 Olympic-size swimming pools.

The ministers of information of Starbucks USA – the marketers – came up with a slogan to capture its overall environmental policy, the idea that companies and consumers can help deal with climate change without having to rely on the government. The sleeves around those white cups made from 10 percent post-consumer recycled fiber say, “Help us help the planet.”

Starbucks USA doesn’t wage war or build overseas bases – at least not yet – but it has issued and stamped “coffee passports,” and it does wade into global markets and local communities.

Rwanda is a case in point. This landlocked central African nation, which suffered from a gruesome genocide in the 1990s, has the right climate for growing high-quality coffee beans. In 2006, Starbucks began to sell Rwandan coffee in its U.S. outlets.

“Taste a special coffee,” an in-store sign suggested, “that’s helping transform farmers’ lives.” “A Promising Future in Every Pound,” a company news release heralded. “Following the devastating events of 1994,” company literature added, only vaguely mentioning the country’s troubled past, “this new cash crop has given Rwandan farmers hope for a better future and helped them afford better education, medicine, and housing.”

The company did the same thing in Colombia. By paying “better prices” for coffee, Starbucks claimed in a short documentary on its Web site, it was aiding in the “the fight against drug trafficking” by providing students with math books, healthy lunches and desktop computers, and “creating more economic stability and a better life for the farmers.”

But just like U.S. foreign policy, Starbucks’ policies in Rwanda and Colombia are not selfless acts. According to a Starbucks sign, “A Better Living for Farmers” translates into “Better Coffee for You” – though it usually means more expensive coffee for you. (See, like the FDA, it does quality control as well.)

“The country,” Schultz declared this month, speaking about the economy, “is not in a crisis. This is an emergency.”

Unlike Washington, Schultz said, Starbucks USA is doing its part, hiring 200 workers a day to remodel existing stores and staff new ones. But he insisted that it’s time to put aside partisan squabbling and do more to get the economy moving. While touting his latest end-run around the federal government, he remained sensitive to the current political moment: He pledged to kick-start the nation’s economy without raising taxes.

Starting Nov. 1, Starbucks will collect donations of $5 or more from customers – just about the price of a grande mocha frappuccino – to build its Create Jobs for USA program. With the money, the company, working with its nonprofit partner, the Opportunity Finance Network, will provide loans to small businesses and community groups around the country. Everyone who chips in will get a red-white-and-blue wristband that says “Indivisible” and broadcasts their allegiance to the Starbucks USA flag.

“I would beg (Washington),” Schultz said when he announced his jobs stimulus package, to “wake up and understand you took an oath of office to represent the country, not personal ideology.”

Many share Schultz’s frustrations. That’s why people are listening to him and looking to Starbucks to save the nation.

Recent opinion polls show that Americans, like Schultz, have lost faith in the ability of federal and state government, Congress and the president, Republicans and Democrats to tackle the problems we face at home and around the world. Yet we still want solutions; we haven’t given up trying to fix things. That is what Starbucks is offering – solutions to deep-seated problems that used to be solved by the government. Citizens have responded by outsourcing their politics to the companies they do business with.

But neither Starbucks nor the Gap nor Ben & Jerry’s can solve the big problems, no matter how hard each one tries. Their Band-Aids can barely cover them up. Schultz’s $5 donations will surely help a few entrepreneurs create jobs, perhaps hundreds of jobs, but they can’t make up the 7.9 million jobs lost since 2008. A few pennies more for a pound of Rwandan coffee will help some growers there, but it won’t get this country back on track or make up for decades of imperial plunder. And those Starbucks coffee cups made out of recycled fibers can’t stop climate change.

What Starbucks USA’s policies do offer us is a chance to feel better, to see ourselves as not as part of the problem, but as part of the solution. We are willing to pay the latte tax for this pat on the back.

To quote a Starbucks sign, “Way to Go, You!”

Bryant Simon is a professor of history at Temple University and the author of “Everything but the Coffee: Learning About America From Starbucks.” He wrote this for The Washington Post.