Good morning.

Starbucks turns 50-years-old this month, but it has never had a year like the last one. With thousands of stores in China, it was hit by the virus early.  In the U.S., it managed to thrive through multiple lockdowns by convincing millions to pre-order drinks on its app and drop by stores to pick them up. Today, the company expects same store sales to have fully recovered in its key markets of the U.S. and China by the end of this quarter.

I spoke to Starbucks CEO Kevin Johnson yesterday and asked whether the crisis had made the company stronger. “Absolutely,” he said. “We are more resilient and stronger today than we were pre-pandemic.”

I write frequently in CEO Daily about recent moves toward stakeholder capitalism. That’s been Starbucks’ DNA from day one. Johnson says in its second half-century, the company will continue to focus on being “planet-positive, people-positive, profit positive.” It has already adopted aggressive goals for cutting its carbon, water and waste footprint by 50% by 2030. And it is five years into a partnership with Arizona State University that has helped 6,000 of its employees get degrees at minimal personal cost. During the worst of the pandemic, the company provided over 2 million free cups of coffee to front-line and health care workers. 

Going forward, Johnson believes, people will return to in-store service. “We are on the cusp of the great human reconnection,” he says.  “As human beings we were meant to connect, to socialize…And Starbucks was built for this moment.” 

By the way, Johnson says Starbucks will not force its workers to get vaccinated. “We will encourage, but we won’t require.” 

Separately, here’s a statistical gap that needs to narrow: Ginger, the online mental healthcare company, fielded a survey that found 96% of CEOs in the U.S. believe they adequately addressed their employees’ mental health needs during the pandemic. But only 69% of employees felt the same.

More news below. And check out this week’s episode of Leadership Next with Visa CEO Al Kelly, who talks about his personal brush with COVID 19, why his company is embracing Bitcoin, and how his Catholic faith influences his leadership style: Apple / Spotify

Alan Murray
@alansmurray
alan.murray@fortune.com

TOP NEWS

AstraZeneca pullback

Thailand is continuing its AstraZeneca COVID vaccine rollout, despite the decision of many countries to pause theirs, over fears of blood clots. In Europe, it's easier at this point to list the countries that haven't stopped giving AZ jabs: the U.K. and Poland. However, medical experts at the WHO and elsewhere maintain there is no proven link between the vaccine and blood clots, and the statistics are on their side. Bonus fact: women who take contraceptive pills are taking a much greater (and proven) risk with blood clots, and medical regulators don't raise an eyebrow about that. Fortune

OxyContin offer

The Sackler family has agreed to pay around $4.38 billion to resolve lawsuits that blame the Purdue Pharma owners for fueling the opioid epidemic. The proposed payment is part of a Purdue restructuring plan filed last night at a New York bankruptcy court. Wall Street Journal

iPhone surveillance

ByteDance, Tencent and other Chinese tech giants are testing ways of continuing to track iPhone users without their consent, despite Apple's new privacy rules. iOS app developers will soon no longer be able to use Apple's IDFA system to track users' app downloads and ad clicks, but the China Advertising Association is pushing an alternative called CAID. Financial Times

Greensill fallout

Credit Suisse might face a charge relating to the collapse of Greensill Capital, the Swiss bank warned today. Apparently the stricken supply-chain finance group has repaid $50 million of a $140 million bridge loan it got from Credit Suisse last year. Reuters

AROUND THE WATER COOLER

Brexit suit

The EU has launched legal action against the U.K. over its decision to delay the introduction of border checks on goods flowing from Great Britain to Northern Ireland. If the U.K. doesn't agree to settle the dispute via negotiations, the EU will push the case in the direction of its highest court, which could in turn allow the bloc to impose financial penalties on its erstwhile member. Politico

Startup Britain

Meanwhile, the U.K.'s tech startups raised more money last year ($15 billion) than their counterparts anywhere except the U.S. ($144 billion) and China ($44.6 billion). Local lobby group Tech Nation says British startups and "scale-ups" are collectively worth $585 billion, which is more than double their 2017 value. CNBC

Fake data

You need data to train A.I., but what if you don’t have enough? An Israeli startup called DataGen is trying to solve that by creating "synthetic data"—A.I.-generated imagery in this case—that its customers can use to train their own systems. That's a strong selling point in an age where data privacy concerns are growing, though DataGen has to work hard to eliminate data bias. Fortune

Cities survive

Will the pandemic halt the "citification" of the world? Expedia Group CEO Peter Kern believes not, writing in a piece for Fortune that "in fact, since the Industrial Revolution, despite devastating wars and pandemics, people have increasingly flocked to cities." Fortune

This edition of CEO Daily was edited by David Meyer.