Starbucks to close stores for racial-bias education

PHILADELPHIA >> Starbucks will close more than 8,000 U.S. stores for an afternoon next month to train employees as the company looks to make amends after two black men were arrested while waiting at one of the coffee chain’s Philadelphia stores last week.

The “racial-bias education” training is scheduled for May 29 for nearly 175,000 employees, the company said in a statement Tuesday.

The announcement follows days of protest and a personal apology by Starbucks chief executive Kevin Johnson to the men in a private meeting Monday, a company spokeswoman confirmed to The Washington Post. The spokeswoman, Jamie Riley, did not provide additional details.

“Closing our stores for racial bias training is just one step in a journey that requires dedication from every level of our company and partnerships in our local communities,” Johnson said in the statement.

Starbucks said the curriculum will be developed with input from national and local experts on confronting racial bias. They include Bryan Stevenson, founder and executive director of the Equal Justice Initiative; Sherrilyn Ifill, president and director-counsel of the NAACP Legal Defense and Education Fund; former U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder; Heather McGhee, president of policy center Demos; and Jonathan Greenblatt, CEO of the Anti-Defamation League.

Johnson, who rushed from Seattle to Philadelphia as the backlash erupted, also met with Philadelphia’s mayor and police commissioner.

The chief executive has publicly apologized for what he called “reprehensible” circumstances that led to the arrest of the two men at a store in Philadelphia’s Center City district Thursday.

“I will fix this,” Johnson said in a video message.

In an interview Monday on “Good Morning America” Johnson said that “what happened to those two gentlemen was wrong” and that the company was reviewing the actions of the store manager who had called police.

“My responsibility is to look not only to that individual but look more broadly at the circumstances that set that up just to ensure that never happens again,” Johnson said.

Starbucks said later that the manager who called police “is no longer at that store.”

The Starbucks at the corner of 18th and Spruce had closed temporarily because of demonstrations inside and outside but reopened Tuesday morning to little commotion. No protesters were outside, and the customers in line showed little interest in talking about what had happened there in recent days.

It was business as usual inside the store, with its neat displays of chicken BLT protein boxes and sparkling mimosa gourmet gummies.

A day earlier, demonstrators had convened at the location. One person in the crowd hoisted a sign that read, “Is she fired or nah?” — a reference to the store manager who called police.