Cornell University announced on Aug. 16 that it will not renew its contract with Starbucks Coffee and will no longer serve Starbucks on campus after the contract expires in 2025. The decision was made amid a push from the student body to end the university’s partnership with Starbucks because of the closure of three unionized locations in Ithaca.
Cornell currently participates in Starbucks’ “We Proudly Serve Program,” which means that the university serves Starbucks products, but can employ student workers at on-campus cafes.
On May 11, student protestors and members of Starbucks Workers United occupied Day Hall at Cornell. Students left the building and slept in tents outside after the Cornell University police department warned that they would receive a referral for trespassing if they did not leave by 9 p.m.
Cornell sophomore Timo Isreb said there were about 40 people at the occupation at its peak. He felt that the occupation and the protest influenced the administration’s decision to not renew the contract.
“Without the protests, [Cornell’s decision not to renew] wouldn’t have happened,” Isreb said. “It really rose a lot of awareness because the occupation of Day Hall is obviously very big. … What got a lot of attention was the building closed at 5 p.m., but we had refused to leave … until certain demands were met.”
Cornell senior Evan Sunshine helped organize the Ithaca Starbucks unionization in 2022 and was involved in the protests in 2023. Sunshine said he thinks the biggest influence in Cornell’s decision to end the partnership was the July 6 ruling from the National Labor Relations Board that determined Starbucks participated in unfair labor practices by closing unionized stores.
“I think that heavily impacted Cornell’s decision and that it was finally really out there and true that Starbucks had broken the law in Ithaca,” Sunshine said. “[Cornell] could not continue working with [Starbucks] in good faith.”
Upon request for an interview, Lindsey Knewstub, deputy director of Media Relations at Cornell, directed The Ithacan to a statement from Joel Malina, vice president of University Relations.
“Cornell Dining does not intend to serve Starbucks Coffee in its café venues after the current agreement with the company expires in 2025,” Malina said in the statement. “As President Martha Pollack mentioned in her response to a related Student Assembly (SA) resolution, Cornell Dining — in consultation with the Student Assembly Dining Services Committee — will initiate an inclusive process to select its next coffee product offerings and to ensure a smooth transition to a new vendor in 2025.”
There are many local coffee brands in the Ithaca area, including Gimme! Coffee and the Ithaca Coffee Company. In 2016, Ithaca was named the coffee capital of New York state. Gimme! Coffee was started in Ithaca in 2000 and currently has five cafe locations in the Ithaca area. Since 2017, the cafe in the Business School has used Gimme! Coffee and in 2019 the cafes in the Roy H. Park School of Communications also switched from Starbucks to Gimme! Coffee. Gimme! Coffee also has an espresso bar in Bill and Melinda Gates Hall on Cornell University’s campus. Also, in 2019, the college switched from Starbucks to using the Ithaca Coffee Company at the Library Cafe.
Following the store closures, many former Starbucks customers have started buying their coffee from Gimme! Coffee. Colleen Anunu, co-managing director and head of product development at Gimme! Coffee said the closure of the Collegetown Starbucks location had the biggest impact on the company’s business because it led Cornell’s students to the espresso bar.
“All of a sudden you have this population of students who pretty much stay in [the Collegetown] area that really had no access to good coffee,” Anunu said. “So we found that our Gates Hall cafe took on a lot of that business from Collegetown. … If you ever go up to our Gates Hall location the line is out the door, the line is never-ending.”
In July 2022, Gimme! decided to become a worker-owned cooperative. After a worker puts in 1,400 hours of work at the company, they can start a payment plan in which $25 is deducted from their pay each week. This goes toward purchasing a $1,300 share in the company. After the first $50 is contributed, they receive voting power and a share of company profits.
Anunu said that while Gimme! Coffee most likely does not have the bandwidth to serve coffee to the entire Cornell campus, the company is interested in strengthening a brand partnership with the university in the future.
“We are trying to feel out what is scalable for us in a way that won’t negatively impact workers at Gimme!,” Anunu said. “We take a much more measured approach to if this is aligning with our values as a co-op and what kind of impact [partnering with Cornell] will have on other projects that we have going on.”
Ithaca College decided to end its partnership with Starbucks in 2017 to reduce the carbon footprint of coffee and to provide local alternatives on campus from the Ithaca community.
Reginald Briggs, senior director of dining services at the college, said Gimme! Coffee provides beans for the Park School cafe and works like a “We Proudly Serve” model.
“They do help us calibrate our machines so that our drinks that we are making are consistent with the same size, shape [and] price as what [Gimme!] serves in their stores,” Briggs said.
Briggs said serving local brands like Gimme! Coffee and Ithaca Bakery on campus helps the college be a community partner in Ithaca and gives local brands more recognition to students who are not from the area.
“[The college] chose to really be more hyperlocal,” Briggs said. “We wanted to have all our partnerships be with local brands that are more well known [in the community].”
Robert Lopez-Astacio was a PHD student at Cornell for six years and said Gimme! is one of his favorite coffee shops. He feels that Cornell’s decision to not renew the partnership with Starbucks is a great idea because it will give local brands and cafes the opportunity to expand in the Ithaca area.
“Especially when the library is really crowded, I just come [to Gimme!] and they have all the facilities and also really great coffee,” Lopez-Astacio said. “So for me [the decision not to renew the partnership] is a plus.”
Lopez-Astacio said most students drink Starbucks on campus because it is the main option on campus, but if local coffee companies are implemented, then students will drink it.
“[Students] are always looking for coffee,” Lopez-Astacio said. “They don’t pay [a lot] of attention to if [the coffee] is Starbucks or any other company.”
Isreb said the majority of Cornell students are still going to drink Starbucks until the partnership ends. “There has always been a pretty sizable group of students who just don’t really care,” Isreb said. “They need coffee and Starbucks is there.”
