First Coffee, Then The World

During my three years stay in Beijing, I lived in the CBD (Central Business District), naturally a busy commercial area. There were about a dozen Starbucks stores within a walking distance and I would occasionally visit some of them. One of the drinks I often got was vanilla latte (香草拿铁).

With about 5000 stores in China, Starbucks store is almost as ubiquitous as McDonalds in the US. Even though price for most items including coffee is higher than those in the US, it seems there is never a shortage of streams of mostly young generations in the stores. Many spent times in the store discussing business, catching up with friends, or simply working on their phones or computers.

Chinese traditionally drink tea instead of coffee and China historically did not grow coffee either. According to its website, Starbucks sources its coffee from more than 30 countries in the three major growing regions of the world. The company's breakfast and house blends come from Latin America. And their popular Pike Place roast comes from Colombia and Brazil. Nevertheless, Starbucks announced that it would be opening a state-of-the-art roasting facility in China in 2022, the largest manufacturing investment outside of the U.S. and its first in Asia.

Meanwhile, my son forwarded me a Bloomberg article on the fascinating economics of vanilla bean. Until the mid-19th century, Mexico was the chief producer of vanilla. In 1836 a Belgian horticulturalist figured out the need for pollination by two rare species of bees. Subsequently, a young slave named Edmond Albius realized he could hand-pollinate the orchids by carefully manipulating the male and female parts of the plant. This discovery transformed vanilla into a cultivatable crop, and small plantations began popping up all over the world. The orchids seemed to grow especially well in Madagascar due to the combination of cheap labor and the climate conditions. Madagascar, followed by Indonesia, are today the world largest producers of vanilla.

Back to my small cup of vanilla latte, I could walk to any of the dozens of Starbucks in five minutes. However, I have to remind myself that it is the multilayered and vast global supply chain including the hard working people in Madagascar, Columbia or Brazil half way around the world that made it possible for me to sip the small cup of Vanilla Latte in an American coffee shop on a Beijing street. The world is more connected than ever before. In this age of growing interconnectedness, we are all leaves on different branches of the same tree.

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