Famous coffee producing company Starbucks, with the cooperation of Microsoft, is developing a new project based on Blockchain. The purpose of this project which is idiomatically called “Farm to cup”, is to give information about coffee manufacturing from the stage of coffee beans to the final product to the customer through Blockchain technology. According to Microsoft, Azure Blockchain Service will be used in this project to provide the possibility of tracing coffee shipments all around the world through digital online tracing in Starbucks supply chain. In this project, all the information related to product manufacturing will be registered from the beginning in Microsoft Blockchain service. Finally, this information including production place, roasting, and notes about its taste will be available for the user in the form of an application.
Microsoft has recently published a software kit for developing applications under Blockchain service. This software kit is added to Visual Studio software in the form of an extension. Moreover, this extension can be used to develop applications based on Ethereum Blockchain and make possible the use of open source tools such as Solidity and Truffle for the developers. Microsoft Blockchain service cooperated with Quorum and JPMorgan Chase to offer services based on applications in Blockchain.
In Michelle Burns’ opinion, Starbucks’ SVP, empowering the farmers with the knowledge and information through technology will finally lead to their livelihood improvement. As Mr. Burns said, this level of transparency gives the customer the opportunity to realize that the coffee he/she enjoys is the result of the ordeals of some people.
Although no clear date has been specified yet to publish this Starbucks service, its demo version will be released for the stockholders at the annual gathering in March. According to Mr. Burns, Starbucks is currently describing the advantages of the project for coffee farmers in Costa Rica, Colombia, and Rwanda.
Presently, Starbucks is cooperating in a platform named Bakkt too. The Bakkt platform is being developed by International Exchange (ICE) in Atlanta. This company is the owner of New York exchange and security. The objective of Bakkt platform is to provide a global network to store and spend different currencies. According to ICE, the experience and expertise of the companies such as Microsoft, Starbucks and BCG are used to manage the user’s risk and experience in Bakkt platform project. In addition, it is said that Starbucks is developing functional and reliable applications to change digital assets to the USD to be applied in the sale markets of the company.
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