Starbucks Is Willing to Pay for Its Chinese Baristas’ Housing

Being a barista is damn tough. From the unending bombardment of Norah Jones to the array of seemingly intentionally unintelligible names, baristas have it rough even as far as the notoriously difficult service industry is concerned.

Thankfully, China's burgeoning coffee slingers has just received some much-needed relief in the form of subsided housing, and just so happens that we have Starbucks to thank for it.

The caffeine behemoth announced recently that it will begin spending millions of dollars to subsidize the housing of thousands of its Chinese employees. Starbucks is already well-known for its benefits program, which ranges from subsidized college tuition in the US to rent deposit loans in the UK.

This particular iteration aims to mirror the Chinese practice of housing workers—many of whom are migrants—in massive, company-owned housing complexes. Aside from a few well-paying jobs sectors, the practice "has been expected in China, especially for non-married workers," explains the president of the Washington State China Relations Council, Kristi Heim. The adoption of the practice is seen as an import move for Starbucks, which is hoping to grow its market power in China as that nation shifts to a major consumer economy.

According to the Seattle Times, Starbucks' housing program will benefit about 7,000 full-time baristas and supervisors out of its total workforce of 30,000 in China. More may become eligible for the benefit soon. Instead of putting employees up in centralized dorms, Starbucks will give employees an allowance specifically for housing. The amount, Starbucks says, will vary from city to city and "situation to situation," and although it won't cover the employees' entire rent, it could provide "well more" than half of the cost of housing, according to company reports.

John Culver, who runs Starbucks' operations in China and the Asia Pacific region, told the Seattle Times, "We listened very carefully to what the needs of the partners are, and one of the things they talked about was housing. You have a lot of people migrating into bigger cities, and the cost of living and rent in those cities is higher. We want to make sure we're giving them the opportunity so that they can afford to live there."

Hey, Starbucks: Some of us in the US might want to move too. We hear San Francisco is pretty nice. Or New Orleans…

Anyways. China is already Starbucks' second-largest market outside of the US, and it now has 2,000 locations in which to get your Frappuccino on. The mega-caffeinator plans 3,400 stores there by 2019.

China's economy has been a tad nuts of late, but Starbucks is pretty sure people in China want to drink its lattes and macchiatos. Culver says the volatility in the Chinese economy hasn't changed the company's plans to put a Starbucks on lots of street corners. "We feel we're in a very strong position to weather any fluctuations in the market," he said.

Getting a free studio apartment in Shanghai might just be worth all that pumpkin spice.