In the world, there are over 21,000 Starbucks locations alone.
According to Glassdoor, the average Starbucks barista — the person that makes your Venti Double-whipped Skim Milked Mochafrappuccino with a dash of Holy Water — typically makes somewhere around $8.79 an hour. Which equates to around $17,580 a year (minus two-weeks unpaid vacation).
Which means that for every Starbucks location in the world, the typical employee makes less than $1 a year per location.
In other words: For one of the most stressful, thankless jobs out there, the typical barista doesn’t make a tush-load of cabbage.
And if we take a recent Gallup poll into account — one that points to $75,000 a year as the ‘Happy’ number for annual salaries — most baristas are less than a quarter of the way there, and their future job outlook isn’t looking much better.
So how can we make this better?
Easy. (And excuse me while I hop up on my soap-box for a bit.)
The Coffee Shop Tax
Here’s how it works: For every item that you order at a coffee shop, simply attach a $1 tax (read: tip) to it.
Ordered a super-complex, twelve-step latte that must be blessed by a Rabbi before going out? Fine, attach a $1 tax to it.
Just a coffee? $1.
For the typical barista, a small bump in tips can mean the difference between making just around $10 an hour, to as much as $15 or $16 an hour, which is an increase of almost $13,000 a year in annual salary.
That’s insane.
And for the less frequent coffee-goer (twice-a-week), that extra $1 works out to less than $9 a month. Less than a Spotify Premium subscription. (For the daily coffee-goer, it’s about $21 a month.)
And it’s an easy way to make everyone else around you a little bit happier.
Can’t afford the extra $1? A smile and a sincere thank you can go a long way, too.
What do you think? What’s your tipping etiquette?
Also See The $5 Rule – Creating Guiding Principles for Random Acts of Kindness by the same author. Follow Mike at https://twitter.com/mikekilcoyne Also follow Mike at http://www.mikekilcoyne.me/
Kindness Blog 
I expect I am being really dense here but I don’t understand what you mean by ‘typical employee makes less than $1 a year per location’. Can you put this in a different way?
It is a nice and generous idea you have but actually I think that Starbucks should ay their employees a decent salary.
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It’s a silly analogy, but it helps you put things into perspective, I guess. And agreed, they absolutely should!
Thanks for reading 🙂
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Whilst I wholeheartedly agree that you should at least smile and take the time to acknowledge your barista when you’re speaking to them, I’m honestly not sure how I feel about tipping. Before you think I’m a stingy creep, please hear me out..!
Generally, I’ll leave at least a 10% tip (which is customary in the UK) after a sit-down meal at a restaurant, but I do it out of cultural conditioning more than anything. When I was a bartender I never expected tips, but I did expect a fair wage from my company. I feel like we should be concentrating more on getting the companies in question to pay a wage their employee’s deserve and are happy with rather than thinking about how much we, the customers, should be tipping. I don’t earn much more now than I did as a bartender, and when I do get a Starbucks or a restaurant meal it’s a treat. Having to supplement people’s low wages with tips seems more like a distraction to the fact that these enormously rich corporations aren’t paying their staff enough! I’m sorry if this sounds mean, but I think it’s meaner to be a big earning company that’s stingy with it’s staff.
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Agreed – I think the problem is with the companies, and it shouldn’t be our responsibility to help them make a more livable wage.
But unfortunately, that’s a much larger issue that could never be rectified. In the meantime, every little bit helps 🙂
Thanks for reading!
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What a simple idea to show how easy it is to make a difference. It really is about a change in the attitude of a persons heart, knowing that even the smallest act of love brings a change into the world.
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Thanks for reading Esther!
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I don’t visit Starbucks to often…to pricy, but when I do, I usually get good service. Around here I have never heard a SB employee complain about wages. Most that I know say they pay pretty good and enjoy some perks. Maybe it’s not like that around the world…but here if employees are dissatisfied they don’t let it affect their service. I enjoy my coffee, but pay more… I will stick to my coffee pot.
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In a lot of countries, barista salaries vary GREATLY. In Australia, they get paid close to $18, which is a HUGE difference in terms of livability. Really depends where you’re from.
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Since I am in Australia and don’t tip as it is not the done thing here I really have no thought on it. I will tell you the average wage for a barista,here is $1743 an hour
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Joanne! Howwwww much? 🙂
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Yeah, Australia is a little bit different. Baristas get paid significantly more.
Wouldn’t hurt, though 🙂
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Come on Starbucks you were ‘one store’ once, the little guy, remember Pike Place, Seattle, I do ?? Why not pay your people a fair wage ??? Why is it in the western world now a daze that the money always comes from the little guy and not the BIG corporation? I am an Ex Pat yank and if you are in ma wee Scottish village now I imagine there are quite a number of stores !! since Pike Place opened. I used to go there to support the little guy, :).
REMEMBER ???
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