Starbucks Community Service

Hi Levi,

I just found this interesting question that you had almost a year ago. Did you do anything about the board?

I think this is an issue for many stores. There is nothing worse than an empty community board and it is fantastic that you wanted to change it. Sometimes I go to the stores and their boards are full of "unrelated junk", old signs and whatever customers put on there.

Assuming that you know what can and what can't be placed on our community boards it needs to be fun, relevant to your community and to your partners! One of my most popular boards was the one that I made a few years ago. I took one of our old posters (recycling is a big think in my store!), flipped it and put a bunch of the pictures from our previous events on it. It covered the whole community board. It had a title What we do when we don't make your coffee...

... We build houses... pictures of partners from Habitat for Humanity events with funny desriptions

... We pick up the trash... pictures of our cleanups

... We walk for Hope... pictures from our cancer walk

... We give Hope... Relay for Life

.... I am pretty sure you got the idea.

I loved watching our customers giggling and commenting the pictures, they appreciate that we give back to our community.

So your original idea was right on.

I see that your Relay for Life event will happen soon. How about making a Relay for Life board? Put the Luminaria forms on it, invite your customers to join your team (make sure to put your team's website on it). We usually have raffle, and I put the sign on the board and let them know that for a $1.00 donation they can win a raffle basket worth $xy (all my partners donate their markouts for this).

Also, we have many Coffee tasting seminarss in our stores so we have the flyers for those. I used to have a "Suggestion" sign for customers to give us ideas about what we could do for them. You should leave some space for your customers' signs in case there is something interesting in their neighborhood.

Let me know how it goes!

All the best and good luck,

Anna