Edited on Jun 23, 2026.
Three coffee chains. Three completely different PR playbooks. Starbucks built the category and now runs the largest brand-marketing operation in coffee retail. The Coffee Bean & Tea Leaf — owned by Sunny Sky Products since 2013 — has spent the last few years working on premium tea and selective international expansion. Caribou Coffee, owned by JAB Holdings since 2013, has been quietly rebuilding under new leadership and focusing on the upper Midwest.
This is a Q&A on how each brand approaches public relations, marketing, and reputation — what is working, what has failed, and what the next phase of coffee chain communications is going to look like.
Quick takeaways
- Starbucks remains the global category leader with over 25,000 stores. The brand is recovering from the 2015 Race Together communications misstep and the 2014 Pumpkin Spice ingredient reformulation cycle.
- The Coffee Bean & Tea Leaf has refocused on premium specialty tea and selective international franchise expansion since the 2013 ownership change.
- Caribou Coffee, under JAB ownership, has been expanding its US footprint with a focus on smaller-format stores and convenience formats in the upper Midwest.
- The differentiation between the three has sharpened rather than blurred. Starbucks owns scale and consistency. Coffee Bean owns premium specialty and tea. Caribou owns Midwest loyalty and a more outdoorsy brand personality.
How these three coffee chains approach PR and marketing
What is Starbucks's PR and marketing strategy?
Starbucks operates one of the largest in-house brand-marketing functions in consumer retail. The strategy rests on four pillars. Seasonal product launches — the Pumpkin Spice Latte, Holiday Cups, and summer drinks all double as earned-media triggers. Premium pricing tied to a curated in-store experience. Digital infrastructure through the Starbucks app and the Starbucks Rewards loyalty program, which is now the largest first-party customer data asset in the coffee category. And cause-marketing tied to sourcing, sustainability, and community investment.
Howard Schultz remains CEO and continues to be the brand's most visible public voice. The communications operation has been navigating a more politically charged environment over the last two years — including the Race Together cycle and broader category criticism around fast-food labor and consumer health.
What is The Coffee Bean & Tea Leaf's PR positioning?
Coffee Bean has historically positioned itself as the premium specialty alternative to Starbucks, with deeper tea expertise and a Southern California heritage going back to 1963. Since the ownership change in 2013, the public-facing strategy has shifted toward international franchise expansion — particularly in Southeast Asia and the Middle East — while U.S. stores have been rationalized. The PR voice is quieter than Starbucks's, more product-centric, with less emphasis on cause or political positioning.
What is Caribou Coffee's brand positioning?
Caribou positions itself around natural, accessible, community-rooted coffee — a deliberate counter-positioning against Starbucks's premium urban aesthetic. The brand's visual identity, with the woodsy cabin imagery and the running caribou logo, reinforces a more outdoorsy and approachable feel. Under JAB ownership, Caribou has been investing in smaller-format stores and partnerships in convenience and grocery channels rather than the aggressive sit-down cafe expansion that defined the category in the previous decade.
Which brand has the strongest PR reputation today?
By reach, Starbucks, with no real competition globally. By per-customer affinity, the picture is more mixed. Starbucks remains the most globally recognized coffee brand in the world, but it also carries the most reputational exposure — every executive change, every price increase, every store closure decision becomes a national news story. Caribou enjoys high net-promoter scores in its core markets but lacks national reach. Coffee Bean has the brand equity of a category pioneer but has narrowed its U.S. footprint from its peak.
What was Starbucks's most discussed recent PR misstep?
The Race Together campaign in March 2015, in which Starbucks asked baristas to write the phrase on cups to spark customer conversations about race, was widely criticized as performative and the cup-writing portion was withdrawn within a week. The case is now part of the standard crisis-communications curriculum.
How does Starbucks use earned media versus paid advertising?
Starbucks spends comparatively little on traditional television advertising relative to other consumer brands of its size. The brand generates earned media through product launches — every PSL season produces billions of social impressions — through seasonal cup design where the annual Holiday Cup reveal has become a media event, and through app and loyalty program announcements. Most of the paid spend is concentrated in digital and in-store rather than broadcast.
How has Coffee Bean & Tea Leaf evolved under recent ownership?
The 2013 acquisition by Sunny Sky Products refocused the company on premium positioning and international expansion. Coffee Bean's brand marketing has been working on its specialty products — Ice Blended drinks, signature teas, and the broader premium positioning — rather than the broader lifestyle marketing of the pre-acquisition era. The chain remains substantial internationally, particularly in Asia.
How do the three brands use social media differently?
Starbucks runs by far the largest social presence in the category. The content is focused on seasonal drinks, app rewards, and customer-generated content. Coffee Bean leans on visual product imagery and international-market content, with a quieter cadence. Caribou's social strategy is the most regional and personality-driven, with content frequently tied to the Midwest, hockey, outdoor recreation, and local store openings.
What can other brands learn from Starbucks's marketing mix?
Three things.
One. The seasonal product calendar is a PR engine. Building predictable, hyped product moments produces earned media without paid amplification. The PSL has been the canonical example for over a decade.
Two. The loyalty app is a marketing channel, not just a payment tool. Starbucks Rewards is the largest first-party consumer data asset in the coffee category. The brand can target promotions, test new products, and measure customer behavior in ways its competitors cannot match.
Three. Values-based positioning is high-risk, high-reward. When Starbucks gets it right — sustained sustainability investment, the College Achievement Plan, veterans hiring — the brand benefits from being seen as taking real responsibility. When it gets it wrong — Race Together — the campaign becomes the story.
What is the future of coffee-chain marketing?
Three trends are converging. Mobile ordering through dedicated apps is changing how customers transact with the chains, and the brands that build the strongest mobile experiences are pulling away. Loyalty-program personalization is replacing mass coupon promotions and producing measurably better economics. And smaller-format drive-thru and convenience stores are taking share from sit-down cafes in middle America, with Dunkin' Donuts and Caribou both pushing aggressively in that direction.
The chains that figure out all three first will define the next phase of category leadership. Starbucks is ahead on the mobile and loyalty pieces. Caribou is making moves on the small-format side. Coffee Bean has the international expansion that the U.S.-focused chains do not.
The bottom line
Starbucks, Coffee Bean, and Caribou represent three different theories of coffee retail. Starbucks runs on scale and consistency. Coffee Bean runs on premium specialty and international franchising. Caribou runs on Midwest loyalty and a counter-positioned brand personality. Each is operating from a different competitive position. Each has built a different PR and marketing operation to support that position.
For brand marketers watching the category, the lesson is that PR strategy follows competitive position, not the other way around. Starbucks can run the operation it runs because of its scale. Coffee Bean and Caribou cannot copy it because their scale does not support it. Each has to find the strategy that fits its actual market position. The brands that try to imitate the category leader without having the category leader's scale tend to produce work that does not land.
The next two to three years will tell us how mobile ordering, loyalty personalization, and smaller-format expansion reshape the competitive map. The three chains discussed here are positioned differently for each of those shifts. The outcomes will not be uniform.
