Starbucks to help Washington improve efficiency at mass vaccination sites

Gov. Inslee unveiled a public-private partnership Monday with local business, health care, and labor leaders to help accelerate vaccine distribution across Washington state.

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The Washington State Vaccine Command and Coordination Center is comprised of a team of partners, including Starbucks and Microsoft, that will coordinate all available resources to administer more vaccines in the state of Washington quickly and efficiently.

Starbucks, as one of the state’s partners, will assist with operational efficiency, scalable modeling, and provide human-centered design expertise and support for new mass vaccinations sites statewide.

“As Governor Inslee mentioned, as a state and as a nation, building vaccination capacity puts us in a position to play offense with this global pandemic,” said Starbucks CEO Kevin Johnson. “The governor has set a goal to dramatically scale up capacity across the state. And we are very fortunate to have many great companies here in the state of Washington.”

He said this is a time for citizens and businesses to come together in support of the governor and the state department of health.

“Now, for the past year, Starbucks has navigated this global pandemic with three simple principles: prioritize the health and well-being of our Starbucks partners, our employees, and the customers we serve,” Johnson said. “Number two is to support local health officials as they work to mitigate and contain the spread of this virus. And number three is to show up in a positive and responsible way in every community we serve.”

Johnson acknowledged that Starbucks is not a health care company, and while its locations will not serve as vaccination sites, it does operate 33,000 stores at scale, serving 100 million customers per week. So, they have experience with logistics.

They also have expertise in human-centered design, as Johnson spoke to during the press conference with the governor on Monday.

“We have a world class team of human-centered design engineers who are working under direction of the state, and health care providers like Swedish, Kaiser Permanente, and others, with tech companies like Microsoft and many other businesses to help support the creation of vaccination centers that can scale,” he said. “And vaccination centers that amplify the comfort, care, and safety of every person who gets vaccinated.”

“We believe this is an opportunity to come together, unite around a common goal, and to support our public sector leaders as they work to scale up vaccination capabilities across the state of Washington,” Johnson added.

As part of the public-private partnership, Microsoft will be offering technology assistance, Costco pharmacies will work on vaccine delivery, and local health care unions will help staff the sites and train volunteer vaccinators. The state’s goal is to vaccinate 45,000 Washingtonians per day.

The KIRO Radio Newsdesk contributed to this report.