In some ways I would expect exactly that. Starbucks' coffee speculators would probably know more about coffee than generalist speculators. The best solution

In some ways I would expect exactly that. Starbucks' coffee speculators would probably know more about coffee than generalist speculators. The best solution might be for Starbucks to bring in a speculation consultant to work with them - and they probably did something like that. I have to confess I'm a little baffled at the story here, though. My understanding is that it's often more important for a large business to have knowledge of future raw materials prices than strictly the lowest possible prices. So it should be expected that buying coffee futures will do more to smooth out the ongoing price of coffee than to minimize it. Sure, it would be nice to minimize the cost of coffee beans and I'm sure Starbucks works hard to do so, but to if they (or anyone) could constantly be perfect coffee price predictors, they wouldn't need to produce coffee to make money.