Coffee drinkers left needing fix
In Houston, would-be customers flock to various Starbucks stores, only to be turned away as workers undergo anti-bias training.
Vijay Mhay, a Punjabi-American, is used to getting “different looks” when he enters stores and restaurants.
“But when I start talking, they know that, ‘OK, he doesn’t have an accent, he’s educated, he knows what he’s talking about,’ they get more calm,” said Mhay. “But … I still get looks.”
A Starbucks store manager in Philadelphia drew national attention to the kinds of racial prejudices minorities are subjected to on a daily basis after calling the police on two African-American men who were waiting for a friend. One of the men was denied access to the store’s restroom because they hadn’t ordered anything. The pair was then arrested.
Mhay was one of millions of customers who couldn’t get their caffeine fix Tuesday afternoon. The Seattle-based company closed 8,000 stores for several hours to train more than 175,000 employees about racial bias and discrimination. The move was part of the company’s aggressive apology campaign to stem public outrage over the April incident.
Starbucks CEO Kevin Johnson publicly apologized within days of the incident and the company quickly settled with Rashon Nelson and Donte Robinson, the two men arrested in
Philadelphia, for an undisclosed sum. The company also offered to cover all of their costs for college. Within days, Executive Chairman Howard Schultz confirmed that the store manager who made the call was no longer with the company.
The chain has since adopted a policy allowing anyone to use their restrooms, even if they don’t purchase anything.
“The incident has prompted us to reflect more deeply on all forms of bias, the role of our stores in communities and our responsibility to ensure that nothing like this happens again at Starbucks,” Schulz wrote in an open letter published on the company’s website Tuesday. “The reflection has led to a longterm commitment to reform systemwide policies, while elevating inclusion and equity in all we do.”
Starbucks’ decision to close thousands of stores so employees could attend the afternoon training has drawn a mix of praise and skepticism.
“You can’t just close your stores for one day of training, even though I applaud the step,” said Trish DeBerry, president and CEO of The DeBerry Group, a marketing and public relations firm based in San Antonio. “It will be how it’s implemented and ingrained into the Starbucks culture every day after that because that is what customers have come to expect from the brand.”
DeBerry added, “You have to walk the walk, not just talk the talk.”
Locked out of caffeine
In Houston, would-be coffee buyers flocked to various Starbucks storefronts, only to be turned away. Few exited their cars, instead reading the signs on the storefronts’ door and driving away visibly annoyed.
The handful of people who did approach the stores were generally receptive to the chain’s temporary closure.
One man, who asked not to be named, had arrived at at an outlet on Post Oak Boulevard to briefly use the internet. He said he was fine with being denied entry so long as it helped “put an end to ‘isms’” like racism.
Brian Thompson, a 38-yearold construction worker, was like others unaware that the chain was briefly closed. He’d heard about the controversy a while ago, and thought it was good that the company was trying to right its wrong.
But he hadn’t really thought much about it since.
“I just try to look past those things,” he said.
The Seattle chain was able to contain some of the negative fallout by quickly meeting with and settling potential litigation with Nelson and Robinson, said Beau Phillips, a crisis communications specialists with Reset Public Affairs in Washington.
“Americans are really good at spotting a phony,” Phillips said. “If a company comes out and apologizes and doesn’t mean it or doesn’t do enough, people are really good about seeing through it and expressing their displeasure.”
But some of the steps, like the new bathroom policy and the racial bias training and adopting the new bathroom policy, “feels like they’ve gone too far,” Phillips said. The company had to backpedal some on its bathroom policy after customers complained that stores could attract homeless people and drug use.
An important step
NAACP Chairman Leon Russell lauded Starbucks’ move as an important step in recognizing unconscious racial bias and said other employers ought to consider similar moves, considering that people of color encounter bias on a regular basis.
“It can be the fact that maybe I’m standing at a hotel counter and I might have on a suit and tie and it’s assumed that I work there or I’m a driver for somebody or something like that,” Russell said in a phone interview Tuesday. “I think, in one way or another, a lot of people feel that kind of discrimination every day.”
Tyler Wright, a 24-year-old psychology graduate from St. Mary’s University, was trying to apply for a job at the chain’s downtown San Antonio location on Houston Street when she found the store closed. Wright, who is black, said she hasn’t experienced discrimination at the chain and doesn’t experience racial bias often at retailers and restaurants.
When she was a teenager, Wright said an employee wrongfully accused her of stealing groceries from a retailer on the East Side. But Wright said she isn’t sure whether that incident was motivated by racism, noting she was carrying a large bag at the time.
“It could’ve been racial bias but it hasn’t happened here so I can’t make that generalization of every Starbucks,” Wright said of the Philadelphia incident. “I like Starbucks.”