Young people line up at the counter ordering their morning coffees. Others are already sitting and sipping at tables, chatting with friends. Just a typical morning at Starbucks?
At this particular Starbucks, though, there’s a round plaque beside the door that reads: “This Community Store is dedicated to supporting youth education. Join us in shaping a promising tomorrow, one empowered mind at a time.”
Welcome to Starbucks’ first Community Store along Jose Abad Santos Avenue in Tondo, Manila. At first, this enormous, modern edifice might seem out of place in one of the most impoverished areas of Manila. But that’s precisely why Starbucks Philippines chose it to be the site of their first Community Store.
“It's dedicated to the community and in that way, a percentage of the revenue is going to go into supporting two organizations that really do work within the community,” says Noey Lopez, president of Starbucks Philippines. “Since support comes from a percentage of the revenue, the more we sell, the more we can give.”
“Tondo — it always rang a bell,” adds Quito Lopez, Starbucks Ph’s store development manager. “I approached marketing and they were the ones who helped in looking for the NGOs to wor
k with.”
“We want to make sure we're going to work with people who have established reputations and who've actually delivered results,” Noey says, so their team vetted the legitimacy and competence of two NGOs.
The first is AHA! Learning Center, which provides empathy-informed learning systems. “We have three interventions which are very holistic,” says AHA! partnerships lead Eliz Gomez. “Academic intervention, which focuses on reading for non-readers and non-numerates to read and do basic math in just 60 days.”
They also address children’s interpersonal skills through social-emotional learning interventions “so we teach them on basic questions like how to deal with bullying, developing leadership skills for inner confidence and becoming assertive.”
Third, support systems involve teachers, parents, and leadership programs. “Our mission is ‘Tayo ang pagbabagong hinihintay.’”
The other NGO is Young Focus for Education and Development Foundation. “What we do is we sponsor students from grade one up to college,” says Young Focus’s Karen Dechavez. “So this school year, we are sponsoring about 1000 students in the Smokey Mountain area of Tondo. We also have programs for out-of-school children and youth, igniting their passions again in learning and then enrolling them again in formal school.”
Dechavez showed a photo of Jason, one of the children in Smokey Mountain who was covered in dirt because he was transporting and selling charcoal on the streets.
“Jason's story is just one of hundreds of stories like this in the area, and this is one of our success stories,” Dechavez says. “So in 2008, he was like this and now he is a graduate in criminology. So when we asked him about his plans in the future, he has a clear goal in mind: to help serve the country and to help serve the community.”
Another element that makes this Community Store a standout is the colorful murals that adorn the façade and interior, painted by artist and environmental-conservation advocate Anina Rubio, who’s done murals with various LGUs across the city.
“The title of my illustration is ‘Brewing Knowledge, Blossoming Communities,’ and I illustrated different species of Philippine flora and fauna as an environmental advocate,” noted Rubio. “I illustrated coffee and books spreading all throughout the artwork is because as an environmental advocate, I try to immortalize or translate nature's beauty into a piece of art that would remind all of you why we need to protect, cultivate and preserve nature, and when I think of the word ‘community,’ nature's ecosystems are perfect examples of what a thriving community should be: symbiosis and a place where everything grows. I feel that Starbucks upholds stainability to a higher regard because of this project, because they not only value profit, but they value people, planet, and purpose.”
Quito says the construction of the 1500-square-meter store was fast, “around 60 days, but it's really the design process that takes a while because there’s a lot of thought put into it from the Starbucks Hong Kong office. They have a lot of visibility on the Community Stores around the region, so our designers wanted to have something special for the first Community Store in our market.”
Quito notes that Abad Santos Tondo is also the first drive-thru store in Manila, “so we've made it all into one.”
Noey says that this is just the first of many Community Stores. “The aspiration is to build many more because we do business in so many communities, and it's part of our mission to be an integral part of the community where we do business,” he says. “In our pipeline, we've identified several areas and several stores that are coming up, where we're thinking we can make an impact.”
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The Starbucks Abad Santos Tondo Community Store is located at 1601-1621 J. Abad Santos Ave. corner Bang Bang St., Tondo, Manila, open daily from 7 a.m. to 10 p.m. for dine-in, takeout, and drive-thru. For more information, follow Starbucks Philippines on their social media pages: Facebook, X (formerly Twitter), Instagram, and TikTok.