UT Students Brew Up Original Business Strategies for Starbucks

It’s not often that students get to suggest business strategies to one of the world’s most recognized coffee brands. But that’s exactly what Starbucks offered to UT’s business majors.

Starbucks allowed the approximately 350 senior-level students to group in 70 teams to pitch business ideas to Starbucks leaders in a case study competition. The student teams were tasked with considering all facets of the multi-national corporation and come up with innovations to strengthen the Starbucks business.

Professors picked the top seven proposals, and the public, through social media, was able to vote on which of the seven ideas they like the most. Full summaries of all of the teams’ ideas are available on www.ut.edu/utampastarbucks/.

On Friday, April 29, Starbucks leaders ultimately chose which group’s plan was the most creative, realistic and best presented, winning $1,000 split among the team, lunch with the Starbucks leadership team at Mise en Place and a backpack with Starbucks swag, including a signed biography from Starbucks CEO Howard Schultz. A trip to Universal Studios is also in the works. The second place team, X3, shared $500 plus the swag and the third place team, Local Star Consulting, shared $250 and the swag.

First-place team MegaBucks, which included Madison Freeman, Mariana DiTommaso, Audrey Quinn, Carlos Lozano and Sean Reilly, proposed improvements to the company’s mobile application as well as the introduction of evening entertainment in Starbucks locations to improve customer traffic in the latter part of the day.

In the team’s summary, they said, “Through the app we plan on implementing a notification feature that will allow friends to know when and where they checked-in, a game called Starbucks Story that will allow users to receive an inside look on what it takes to be a Starbucks barista and finally, an events calendar where managers can plan events such as our Caffeinated Canvases.”

“The most interesting part was getting to know the people who work at Starbucks and getting feedback on our work and ideas throughout the semester,” said Freeman ’16, a marketing major from Chicago graduating in May.

For Reilly ’16, an accounting major from Medford, NJ, the intriguing part was working with a company like Starbucks.

“Starbucks is the leader in the coffee industry and getting the chance to research and ask their managers during our Q-and-A sessions about their company was the most interesting aspect for me,” said Reilly. “Starbucks is a billion-dollar company and has a global brand/following, which made it challenging coming up with recommendations that were feasible and that align with their mission statement and core values.”

Throughout the semester, the teams had two, 15-minute opportunities to privately interview Starbucks leaders. The competition began on Friday, Jan. 22, when Starbucks leaders addressed the students and gave them a company overview.

The case study competition is a regular feature of the Sykes College of Business class Practical Strategic Assessment (Management 431). The case study competition was started in the spring of 2008 and has been held every semester since then. Participating companies have included Mr. Empanada, College Hunks Hauling Junk, OneTouch Direct and United Way Suncoast.

Jody Tompson, professor of management and director of the UT Naimoli Institute for Business Strategy, said the competition is great experience for business students, and allows students to get real world experience dealing with strategic thinking in a competitive marketplace.

“We are thrilled to have partnered with Starbucks to provide UT students with a one-of-a-kind learning opportunity,” Tompson said. “I think Starbucks was overwhelmed by the quality of the ideas that were presented last week.”

Starbucks, which recently opened a store on the first floor of UT’s new Maureen A. Daly Innovation and Collaboration Building, currently has 23,571 stores in 70 countries around the world with more than 300,000 partners that wear the green apron globally.

“This experience was very challenging and extremely rewarding. Being able to wrap up my college career here at UT by pitching my team Megabucks’ ideas to Starbucks executives is something I can look back on in five to 10 years,” Reilly said. “Management 431 is a very unique class that allows us, the students, to be creative and use our personal skill set (marketing, accounting, management, etc.) to bring what we learned in the textbooks for the past four years to a real life company like Starbucks.”