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Starbucks Commits to Raising Awareness of Racial Bias

After a highly publicized act of racial discrimination in a Starbucks store, the company makes changes to try to prevent racial bias and discrimination in its coffee shops.

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After a highly publicized act of racial discrimination by a Starbucks employee against two African American men in one of its stores in 2018, the company closed its 8,000 U.S. coffee shops for a day of unconscious bias training. The company also revised store policies and employee training practices. Harvard Business School professors Francesca Gino and Katherine Coffman discuss what we can learn about unconscious bias in corporate culture from Starbucks’ reaction to that incident in their case, “ Starbucks: Reaffirming Commitment to the Third Place Ideal .”

HBR Presents is a network of podcasts curated by HBR editors, bringing you the best business ideas from the leading minds in management. The views and opinions expressed are solely those of the authors and do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of Harvard Business Review or its affiliates.

BRIAN KENNY: If you happen to be driving on I-96 just outside of Detroit, there’s a billboard that will surely get your attention. It reads, “Driving while Black, racial profiling just ahead, welcome.” “Driving while Black” is an all too familiar term in the U.S. and it highlights one of the many indignities that Black people endure on a daily basis as a result of implicit or explicit bias. In fact, almost any activity that seems mundane to whites, becomes stressful and anxiety-ridden when you do it while Black. Shopping, studying, parenting, and of course, dining. It’s a documented phenomenon, the journal of Black studies surveyed 200 restaurant servers in North Carolina and found that 38.5% admit to discriminating against Black customers while 59% say they’ve witnessed discrimination by others. Meanwhile, Black diners report that they are often mistaken for valets, coat checks, and washroom attendance. And it’s not just a Southern thing. Today’s case takes us to a Starbucks in Philadelphia where two Black men seated at a table, waiting for a friend, would become the latest examples of the perils of dining while Black. Today on Cold Call , we’ll discuss the case entitled, “Starbucks: Reaffirming Commitment to the Third Place Ideal.” With co-authors, Francesca Gino and Katie Coffman. I’m your host, Brian Kenny, and you’re listening to Cold Call . Brought to you by Harvard Business School.

Francesca Gino’s research focuses on why people make the decisions they do at work and how leaders and employees have more productive, creative, and fulfilling lives. Katie Coffman uses experimental methods to study individual team and managerial decision making with a focus on gender stereotypes. I’m so pleased to be speaking with both of you today. We get both authors. Thanks for joining me.

FRANCESCA GINO: Thank you for having us, Brian.

KATIE COFFMAN: Great to be here.

BRIAN KENNY: And we are socially distanced, in fact, we are more than socially distanced, we’re far away from each other because we are continuing here to be in the midst of the pandemic. And we are in the midst as well of another major crisis unfolding in the United States. And that has to do with George Floyd’s death and the Black Lives Matter movement. So, this case to me feels all the more timely and prescient. And ironically, we started talking about doing this case on the podcast well, before that happened. So, I think a lot of our questions and conversation today will reflect on the current situation and what we can learn from this case. Katie, I’m going to start off with you; could you just set the scenario, tell us what happened on April 12th, 2018.

KATIE COFFMAN: I think it’s a scene we’ve probably all seen in a Starbucks at one point in our life or another, which is two individuals sitting at a table waiting for another person to arrive. But in this scenario, those two individuals were African American men. And the situation was, these were two aspiring entrepreneurs waiting for a business associate that they were going to have a meeting with. They sat down to wait, they hadn’t purchased anything. One of them asked to use the restroom and an employee responded that because they hadn’t purchased anything, the restrooms were for customers only. After that they sat back down and the employee approached them again and told them, can I help you with something? Sort of asking, what are you doing here? And they said, “We’re waiting for a meeting.” And that employee asked them to make a purchase or leave. Within minutes of that encounter with no escalation of voices or any conflict beyond that, the police had been called. And the police arrived, there was a confrontation pretty shortly thereafter and just two police officers turned into six police officers. The men were told they had one more chance to leave, even though other customers, the business associate showed up and said, “We think these people are being treated unfairly, this doesn’t seem like they’ve done anything wrong.” The police still stayed and told the men they were actually no longer free to leave. And they were brought to a local station in handcuffs and placed in a cell for several hours before ultimately being released that evening with no charges filed.

BRIAN KENNY: So that sounds just so familiar, doesn’t it? In the current context, and we know that it could have even ended much more tragically than it did, but it’s amazing the parallels to what we saw happen with George Floyd and then in so many other instances. Francesca, you’ve taught it in the classroom. I’m wondering if you could just tell our listeners, how do you dive into this conversation? What’s your cold call in this particular case?

FRANCESCA GINO: The first question I always love to ask in class is a question that gets us to analyze how Starbucks responded to the Philadelphia incident. And so I would ask students right off the bat, what were the features of Starbucks response? What were some of the strengths and some of the weaknesses in the response that they used? I did try a couple of time to go down a different route. And maybe this is an approach that is a little bit more courageous because it can bring out right at the start of class, a lot of emotions. But basically, I set the stage by telling students why we’re discussing the case, that we’re really interested in trying to evaluate how this big organization has reacted to an incident of discrimination directly in its store. And an incident, let’s not forget, that was caught on camera by customers and it basically became viral within hours. And so, I basically say, look, this is obviously not a case in isolation. I ask people to reflect on their experiences for a moment and then ask them whether they would be willing to share the experience, or at least to tell us the words that they would use to describe how they felt. And I described it as a more courageous route, but I think it’s a discussion that might be important because it gives students really an opportunity to engage with the challenges of unconscious bias and how so easily this, maybe even without a bad intention, can turn into discriminatory behavior.

BRIAN KENNY: So, we’re going to talk a lot about unconscious bias in the course of this conversation, some of our listeners might be thinking, this is a business focused podcast, what does this have to do with business? So I guess I would ask both of you the next question. Why did you decide to write the case? How does it relate back to the kinds of things that you look at as a scholar?

FRANCESCA GINO: Maybe I’ll get started by telling you why I think this is a case that it’s quite important for a business school and for an audience, whether it’s executives or MBA students. Through the case, we basically get to evaluate how a very large organization that operates globally and really takes pride in being open, inclusive in its culture and being a space that is between home and work, reacted to an incident where an employee used discriminatory behavior. And to me, especially in a world where, because of social media, what we do inside organizations becomes knowledge that a lot of people around the globe can get access to. And so they get to see everything that is happening in the moment. It’s really important to think through how would we react as leaders or how is it that we’re creating the conditions intentionally or not to see people in our own organizations react in this way?

KATIE COFFMAN: There’s obviously the moral and ethical imperative to try and root out racism in all forms in our organizations. But on top of that, I think there’s increasing awareness of the missed business opportunity. If your organization, especially in the customer service type industry, is not a place that’s consistently welcoming, friendly, fair, you’re not going to be as successful as a business. So I think understanding the ways where we could actually reach a broader audience with our products, with our services across a variety of industries, is really important and can be a missed opportunity for a lot of organizations.

BRIAN KENNY: So, we know there are significant costs to the brand of firms that find themselves in these kinds of situations. Right? But there are other costs I would imagine that are associated with it, too. Katie, I wonder if you could talk a little bit about some of the, both, I guess the level of pervasiveness of bias, whether it’s unconscious or not. And I do want to talk a little bit about what that means, but what are the ripple effects of these kinds of things in terms of the cost of doing business?

KATIE COFFMAN: You could think both about the cost among your own employees and the culture within your organization, the extent to which your employees really feel aligned with the mission and values of your organization, how effectively they’re able to work with each other and bring their whole selves to work. So, you have to think about, I think the employee side of things, and on the flip side for a company, particularly like Starbucks, you have to think about the customer side of things, which is what’s our relationship with the community? What’s our relationship with our patrons? Are we a place that people feel comfortable going to, feel proud of going to and include as part of their daily routine? I know in our conversations with Starbucks, a number of members of their leadership team talked about how easy it is to lose a potential customer through one bad experience. And certainly, a bad experience like this, has the capacity to reach a large number of people, not just the specific individual who was targeted. In constructing the employee culture you want, but also in making sure that you’re an appealing place for people to shop, to do business, to spend their money. Making sure that your organization is as free from the negative consequences of bias as possible. It is really a business imperative.

BRIAN KENNY: Obviously, businesses have been thinking a lot about this, right? This is not a new phenomenon. I think we’ve talked about finding ways to make people aware of their bias so that they are more thoughtful about how they’re engaging with customers and with coworkers and such. Francesca, I would ask you, how persistent is this problem? Have we made any headway or is it just as bad as it’s always been?

FRANCESCA GINO: So, I would coach this in a couple of observations. First of all, one of the ways in which I believe we’ve made progress and organizations and leaders have made progress is by focusing more often or more attentively to creating work places that are inclusive. In fact, I would say it’s hard to think of leaders who don’t think that diversity and inclusion are important to their organizations. Where I don’t see a lot of progress yet is truly understanding what it takes to be an inclusive leader or to create an inclusive environment. And it’s sometimes troubling to leaders and to employees alike to realize that some of these biases happen at the unconscious level. And to realize that our human nature is imperfect. What I think is equally surprising is to think about what can effectively drive change. So there have been a lot of organizations doing unconscious bias training, often not with the results that they expected. And I think that comes down to not truly understanding what solutions are helpful to reducing unconscious bias. The organizations that are making headway or that are being more thoughtful are really organizations that do not think about diversity inclusion as a HR problem. But somebody or leaders who thinks that fundamentally we need to make, I would say inclusion and diversity part of the DNA of the organization. And that requires much more thoughtfulness and requires being willing of being part of a messy journey where you might not get everything right.

BRIAN KENNY: But Starbucks had that, Howard Schultz had a vision for Starbucks, and they focused a lot on this. Didn’t they, Katie? Wasn’t this something that was important to Starbucks and apparently it didn’t take?

KATIE COFFMAN: I think that’s one of the really important learnings from this case, because if we look at the history of Starbucks and their mission and values, one of the fundamental principles they had is that Starbucks is going to exist as what they would call a “third place” for their communities. And the idea of a third place is, you have your home, you have their work, Starbucks is going to be a third place where you could really just be. Right. It’s welcoming, it’s safe, it’s inclusive. You can come, you can have a cup of coffee, you can do your work and it’s going to feel like one of those safe, special places to you. And that’s been a part of their value systems really from the start. And yet even with that type of mindset and a set of policies aimed at achieving that, you can still have this kind of behavior and this kind of outcome. And I think you could make the same analogy when thinking about individuals. Even individuals with really good intentions, who would not view themselves as a racist person can still, because of these unconscious biases end up with actions, with behaviors, with poorly chosen words, doing things to create problems, particularly for underrepresented groups. And so I think part of the recognition here is this really can happen to any organization, to any person. And you have to have a much deeper understanding of the root causes of these types of behaviors and what we can actually do to make those unconscious biases less problematic in our lives and in our workplaces.

BRIAN KENNY: So to your point a Francesca, this can’t just be an HR initiative, right? This has to be an initiative that cuts across the fabric of the entire organization.

FRANCESCA GINO: Exactly. And one of the things I do appreciate in the response to the Philadelphia incident is that Sternberg started a journey. So everybody, especially the press has been very focused on the fact that they ended up closing down their stores on a particular day to do some training. That was about understanding racial injustice and also understanding unconscious bias. But it was really the beginning of a much larger journey. And so it’s interesting that maybe that closing the stores was symbolic to get us started, but it was one only one step of a journey that is still continuous. And again, I think that the leaders were going to be really thoughtful about this need… to be ready to take steps that might not be the right ones, but at least to try their best to address issues that might be happening across all parts of the organization. And it’s both about the behavior of the leaders and the employees who work in the organizations, but also trying to understand whether there are policies or systems that are becoming, system that systematically reinforce discriminatory behavior potentially. Like in the case of Starbucks, the policies that they introduced at some point about who’s a customer and who’s not a customer, might in fact, have contributed to, by judgment on the part of the store manager.

KATIE COFFMAN: I completely agree with what Francesca said and I think so much attention has been paid to that May 29th store closure. In my opinion, one of the smartest things they did were these policy changes, right? So really shortly after this incident, they recognized that their policies were maybe the biggest contributing factor to this incident. And in particular, putting the owners and store managers to make distinctions between customers and non-customers in terms of what was going to be permitted in terms of bathroom use. And they gave them much more explicit guidance on what type of behaviors are appropriate and not appropriate in the store and gave them an explicit guide for actually addressing disruptive behavior. That type of de-escalation emphasis and giving that to their employees, their store managers, their partners, so that they were much better position from a policy perspective to actually handle these types of incidents in a much better way.

BRIAN KENNY: So let’s dive into what Starbucks did, because I think that’s the basis of a lot of the most salient points in the case. They shut everything down, did they mandate for employees to go to this training? Was it optional or did you have to do it?

FRANCESCA GINO: They did not make it mandatory. So they allowed people to choose and they didn’t actually record whether or not you participated. But from the qualitative data that they collected, it seems as if most people were actually there taking the course and the training.

BRIAN KENNY: And what was the training like? What were they trying to teach?

KATIE COFFMAN: It’s incredibly impressive from an operational perspective, both how quickly and how comprehensively they were able to put together this program. So I think the idea was to spend a couple of hours with store managers, store partners, increasing awareness, and doing education around racial bias. And to produce that content, they actually worked with a variety of both internal and external resources, really consulted with experts in this area to try and make that training as impactful as possible. You have 8,000 stores, there’s no way you’re going to be able to recruit and train and deploy a bias training facilitator for each of those stores, so they created this centralized version of the content that could then be deployed with iPads, accompanied with a guidebook to help store managers actually navigate and lead the discussion within their own stores. They also gave private notebooks to all the employees who would participate so they could answer questions privately, make reflections, and actually take those home with them with hopes that these learnings would last a little bit longer.

BRIAN KENNY: And were the managers leading their own teams in this exercise? I mean, was it like a cascading type effect?

FRANCESCA GINO: Exactly. So, the store manager is in charge of leading the training, paced according to how the people in the store are actually reacting to the content.

KATIE COFFMAN: I’ll just add to that too. I think an important part of their approach, and we mentioned this in the case is that all of this is also paid time. Right. And I think that says something about the mindset too. This isn’t extracurricular activity that, hey, wouldn’t it be great if we got a little bit better on this, maybe you should spend some time with this. This is employees being paid to engage in these important conversations. And I think that sends a really key message to everyone in the organization.

BRIAN KENNY: So, did it work and how did employees respond to it?

FRANCESCA GINO: So, measuring success is actually a question that we ask in class when we teach this case, because we’re interested and intend to understand how do you know after making such big investments that you’re making progress? That in fact you are looking at your employees, you’re looking at your leaders and you see that they’re treating each other equally, that there is no sign of discrimination. And this is a really hard question to ask, not only to the students in class, but also when we asked it to the leaders themselves. A couple of data points that they brought up that were interesting: first is what seems to be the climate in the stores around actually having these conversations. And the fact that again, the people in the store often mirror the type of communities that they serve made people feel more included because they had more opportunity to talk about their experiences. Or if you look specifically at the store in Philadelphia, that actually had the incident. If you look at it from a profitability standpoint, the year after the incident was quite a good year for them. And so there are elements, maybe not perfect data or the type of objective performance measures that many leaders may like or that Katie and I would love to see when we look at our research and try to understand the effect of a policy change, but there are at least indicators that can help us understand whether this has been successful or not. And if I were to put my scholar’s hat on or my instructor’s hat on, I would also try to understand if the journey they’ve been on fundamentally touches on some of the elements that we know are important when we’re trying to fight unconscious bias and discriminations. So for example, the presence of information that is counter stereotypical, or trying to increase content or connecting with empathy, with people who look different from you. And so if I keep this element in mind then I would say, I think that they’re on a good standing, given the type of conversations that they’ve started.

BRIAN KENNY: Katie, let me ask you this question. I’m wondering in the wake of what happened with George Floyd and what feels like a movement at this point, something feels different about what’s happening in our country right now. Does this change the inflection of the conversation that you would see yourself having with students around this?

KATIE COFFMAN: One of the things I’ve taken away from the last couple of weeks, or maybe now months of this social movement, is that the bar for what it means to be a good person in this context is going up. And I think going up in a really good way. It’s no longer enough to be someone who’s not actively engaging in discrimination. It’s now important to actually, I think the term we’re seeing a lot is to be anti-racist, right. That you’re taking active actions to make the systems, the institutions, the culture around you, one that is less racist and more equitable. When you think about judging Starbucks’s response, I think in a lot of ways over the last year now, the bar is going up for whether Starbucks’s response is good enough. And I think that’s actually a really positive reflection on where we’re moving from a societal perspective, which is, we’re not just getting rid of problems, but are they actually doing enough to create change? And so I’m really excited to teach this case more in the coming year and hear from our students and from executives of how they see the recent conversations, changing their views of this incident and the response. I think it couldn’t be more timely.

FRANCESCA GINO: I also think that there is an aspect of the case that usually doesn’t get as much attention or didn’t get as much attention in previous sessions that I’ve taught when I use this case. We focus a lot on how you would react as a leader if you were actually to see something happening like this in your own organizations. So the attention is on the store managers calling the police on these two Black customers. But the story is a little bit more complex and richer. How about the police officers who were there and arrested the two individuals without too many questions about what had happened? And so I think given the current social crisis that we’re living through, I think the students, whether MBAs or executives, would point to the role of the officers much more quickly and likely they would also point to the customers who were sitting there watching this unfold and practically doing anything.

KATIE COFFMAN: And there, I would applaud Starbucks too, because in thinking about their response and maybe it didn’t stand out at the time, but I can tell you reading back through it now, a lot of the guidance they provided is, who can you call before you call the police? If there’s a behavior that’s going on that you think needs to be addressed, where can you turn first? Should you actually be turning attention to a mental health professional? Is there a shelter that you need to be connecting with? And all of these other resources. And I think it’s just so very connected to the conversations we’re having now, the movement to defund the police, that wasn’t really part of the mainstream conversation at the time of the incident. And yet I think Starbucks had a lot of foresight to say, if we can avoid the stage where we’re even calling the police in the first place, maybe that has the potential to have a real positive impact.

BRIAN KENNY: One last question for each of you, and this has been really interesting hearing you talk about the case. I think lots of great insights here. But for our listeners, almost all of whom I think are people who are interested in business or practicing business in some way, some are leaders, some are managers, some are somewhere in between. What can they do individually? Because I think a lot of us look at this and it’s like boiling the ocean, it seems like such an enormous problem. And what kind of impact could I have? But I would expect that there are some things that people can do practically within their role, no matter what they are. So Katie, I’ll ask you to maybe comment on that, what piece of advice you’d like to give and then Francesca, same from you.

KATIE COFFMAN: I think awareness of unconscious bias is an important first step and recognizing the prevalence of it in ourselves and across others that we’re going to encounter. And I think that type of awareness is an important first step, but hardly sufficient. And so, when do these unconscious biases become most problematic? Well, it’s really about these implicit associations, these intuitive decisions we make, these quick decisions we make. So, both in our policy design and in our individual actions, can we interrupt that mapping from unconscious bias, implicit association to action. Because it’s going to be very hard, I think we’ve seen in research, you can’t just suddenly become someone who has no unconscious bias. But I think the case is much stronger that you can become someone who takes actions and acts with a deliberate hand to make it the case that whatever unconscious bias you have is going to be less likely to impact the decisions you make.

BRIAN KENNY: Great. Francesca?

FRANCESCA GINO: I was struck in writing this case and talking to the leaders about the reaction that the CEO had, Kevin Johnson, when he was thinking back to the moment he realized this had happened, and it did seem it was discriminatory behavior. And he kept asking himself two questions. One was, what is the right thing to do? How did we prepare our people for this? And I think that that is a very profound question because unconscious bias is in fact pervasive. And as leader, we do play a role in trying to understand it better but also give people the opportunity to have conversations, to try to understand how to pause in the moment and make sure that they’re coming up with the right judgment and the right behavior in that particular moment.

BRIAN KENNY: Great advice. And hopefully there will be other cases forthcoming where companies are showing great examples of how to do this and to succeed at it. Katie and Francesca, thank you so much for joining us on Cold Call .

FRANCESCA GINO: Thank you so much, Brian, for having us.

KATIE COFFMAN: Thank you so much.

BRIAN KENNY: If you enjoy Cold Call , you might like other podcasts on the HBR Presents network. Whether you’re looking for advice on navigating your career, you want the latest thinking in business and management, or you just want to hear what’s on the mind of Harvard Business School professors, the HBR Presents network has a podcast for you. Find them on Apple Podcasts or wherever you listen. I’m your host, Brain Kenny, and you’ve been listening to Cold Call , an official podcast of Harvard Business School on the HBR Presents network.

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Starbucks strikes deal with EEOC over alleged racial bias in promoting employees

• Starbucks disclosed that it has reached an agreement with the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission in its third civil rights assessment from Covington & Burling.
• The company said that it made a deal with the EEOC earlier this year after the agency alleged racial discrimination in its store-level promotions, based on data from 2007 through 2011.
• As part of the agreement, Starbucks is making a number of changes to make its promotion process more transparent and formal.

In this article

Starbucks said Wednesday it has resolved allegations from the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission about alleged racial bias in its employee promotions, based on data from 2007 through 2011.

In a letter to employees, CEO Kevin Johnson said that Starbucks does not know what prompted the EEOC allegations and that the company's analysis of its own data did not show systemic discrimination in store-level promotions.

"The agreement is not only the right thing for partners, it has also led us to focus more resources on structural changes necessary to support partners' career progressions and ensure that every partner has the opportunity to learn about promotion opportunities," Johnson wrote.

The agreement with the federal agency was disclosed in Starbucks' third annual civil rights assessment from the law firm Covington & Burling. The law firm said in the report that it did not represent Starbucks in the matter or independently investigate the allegations.

A Starbucks spokesperson said that the company was engaged in on-and-off dialogue with the EEOC before reaching the agreement earlier this year. The spokesperson declined to comment on whether there was financial penalty, citing the confidentiality of the legal matter.

To make the promotion process for cafe employees more formal and transparent, the company is developing an application tracking system that shows all retail job postings and includes ways to track data. Store managers will no longer be able to promote workers outside of the formal promotion framework, and the company is rolling out new training for leadership involved in hiring decisions, including new interview guides.

The responsibilities of Starbucks' inclusion and diversity team will expand to include overseeing compliance and analytics and ensuring that diversity goals play a role in making business decisions. The company has also hired an independent labor economist to analyze data, create promotion goals and track its progress in achieving those targets.

The company first commissioned a civil rights assessment from Covington & Burling in 2019, months after police arrested two Black men who hadn't ordered yet at a Philadelphia cafe. The backlash that resulted from the incident led the company to close all of its company-operated locations for a day of training on racial bias and to make stronger commitments to be more inclusive.

In the wake of the Black Lives Matter protests that began in late May last year, Starbucks made additional commitments to stand up for racial justice and equity, including in its own workplace. It updated its "third place policy," including adding specific examples of unacceptable behavior, like hate speech or racial slurs, and provided deescalation training to baristas. In October, Starbucks said that it would tie executive pay to new diversity targets . Earlier in March, Starbucks promoted Dennis Brockman to the role of global chief inclusion and diversity officer.

Starbucks Commits to Raising Awareness of Racial Bias

Brian Kenny: If you happen to be driving on I-96 just outside of Detroit, there's a billboard that will surely get your attention. It reads, “Driving while Black, racial profiling just ahead, welcome.”

“Driving while Black” is an all too familiar term in the US and it highlights one of the many indignities that Black people endure on a daily basis as a result of implicit or explicit bias. In fact, almost any activity that seems mundane to whites, becomes stressful and anxiety-ridden when you do it while Black. Shopping, studying, parenting, and of course, dining. It's a documented phenomenon, the journal of Black studies surveyed 200 restaurant servers in North Carolina and found that 38.5 percent admit to discriminating against Black customers while 59 percent say they've witnessed discrimination by others. Meanwhile, Black diners report that they are often mistaken for valets, coat checks, and washroom attendance. And it's not just a Southern thing. Today's case takes us to a Starbucks in Philadelphia where two Black men seated at a table, waiting for a friend, would become the latest examples of the perils of dining while Black. Today on Cold Call, we'll discuss the case study entitled, Starbucks: Reaffirming Commitment to the Third Place Ideal , with coauthors, Francesca Gino and Katie Coffman. I'm your host, Brian Kenny, and you're listening to Cold Call. Brought to you by Harvard Business School.

Francesca Gino: Thank you for having us, Brian.

Katie Coffman: Great to be here.

Brian Kenny: And we are socially distanced, in fact, we are more than socially distanced, we're far away from each other because we are continuing here to be in the midst of the pandemic. And we are in the midst as well of another major crisis unfolding in the United States. And that has to do with George Floyd's death and the Black Lives Matter movement. So this case to me feels all the more timely and prescient. And ironically, we started talking about doing this case on the podcast well, before that happened. So I think a lot of our questions and conversation today will reflect on the current situation and what we can learn from this case. Katie, I'm going to start off with you; could you just set the scenario, tell us what happened on April 12th, 2018.

Katie Coffman: I think it's a scene we've probably all seen in a Starbucks at one point in our life or another, which is two individuals sitting at a table waiting for another person to arrive. But in this scenario, those two individuals were African American men. And the situation was, these were two aspiring entrepreneurs waiting for a business associate that they were going to have a meeting with. They sat down to wait, they hadn't purchased anything. One of them asked to use the restroom and an employee responded that because they hadn't purchased anything, the restrooms were for customers only. After that they sat back down and the employee approached them again and told them, can I help you with something? Sort of asking, what are you doing here? And they said, "We're waiting for a meeting." And that employee asked them to make a purchase or leave. Within minutes of that encounter with no escalation of voices or any conflict beyond that, the police had been called. And the police arrived, there was a confrontation pretty shortly thereafter and just two police officers turned into six police officers. The men were told they had one more chance to leave, even though other customers, the business associate showed up and said, "We think these people are being treated unfairly, this doesn't seem like they've done anything wrong." The police still stayed and told the men they were actually no longer free to leave. And they were brought to a local station in handcuffs and placed in a cell for several hours before ultimately being released that evening with no charges filed.

Brian Kenny: So that sounds just so familiar, doesn't it? In the current context, and we know that it could have even ended much more tragically than it did, but it's amazing the parallels to what we saw happen with George Floyd and then in so many other instances. Francesca, you've taught it in the classroom. I'm wondering if you could just tell our listeners, how do you dive into this conversation? What's your cold call in this particular case?

Francesca Gino: The first question I always love to ask in class is a question that gets us to analyze how Starbucks responded to the Philadelphia incident. And so I would ask students right off the bat, what were the features of Starbucks response? What were some of the strengths and some of the weaknesses in the response that they used? I did try a couple of time to go down a different route. And maybe this is an approach that is a little bit more courageous because it can bring out right at the start of class, a lot of emotions. But basically I set the stage by telling students why we're discussing the case, that we're really interested in trying to evaluate how this big organization has reacted to an incident of discrimination directly in its store. And an incident, let's not forget, that was caught on camera by customers and it basically became viral within hours. And so I basically say, look, this is obviously not a case in isolation. I ask people to reflect on their experiences for a moment and then ask them whether they would be willing to share the experience, or at least to tell us the words that they would use to describe how they felt. And I described it as a more courageous route, but I think it's a discussion that might be important because it gives students really an opportunity to engage with the challenges of unconscious bias and how so easily this, maybe even without a bad intention, can turn into discriminatory behavior.

Brian Kenny: So we're going to talk a lot about unconscious bias in the course of this conversation, some of our listeners might be thinking, this is a business focused podcast, what does this have to do with business? So I guess I would ask both of you the next question. Why did you decide to write the case? How does it relate back to the kinds of things that you look at as a scholar?

Francesca Gino: Maybe I'll get started by telling you why I think this is a case that it's quite important for a business school and for an audience, whether it's executives or MBA students. Through the case, we basically get to evaluate how a very large organization that operates globally and really takes pride in being open, inclusive in its culture and being a space that is between home and work, reacted to an incident where an employee used discriminatory behavior. And to me, especially in a world where, because of social media, what we do inside organizations becomes knowledge that a lot of people around the globe can get access to. And so they get to see everything that is happening in the moment. It's really important to think through how would we react as leaders or how is it that we're creating the conditions intentionally or not to see people in our own organizations react in this way?

Katie Coffman: There's obviously the moral and ethical imperative to try and root out racism in all forms in our organizations. But on top of that, I think there's increasing awareness of the missed business opportunity. If your organization, especially in the customer service type industry, is not a place that's consistently welcoming, friendly, fair, you're not going to be as successful as a business. So I think understanding the ways where we could actually reach a broader audience with our products, with our services across a variety of industries, is really important and can be a missed opportunity for a lot of organizations.

Brian Kenny: So we know there are significant costs to the brand of firms that find themselves in these kinds of situations. Right? But there are other costs I would imagine that are associated with it, too. Katie, I wonder if you could talk a little bit about some of the, both, I guess the level of pervasiveness of bias, whether it's unconscious or not. And I do want to talk a little bit about what that means, but what are the ripple effects of these kinds of things in terms of the cost of doing business?

Katie Coffman: You could think both about the cost among your own employees and the culture within your organization, the extent to which your employees really feel aligned with the mission and values of your organization, how effectively they're able to work with each other and bring their whole selves to work. So you have to think about, I think the employee side of things, and on the flip side for a company, particularly like Starbucks, you have to think about the customer side of things, which is what's our relationship with the community? What's our relationship with our patrons? Are we a place that people feel comfortable going to, feel proud of going to and include as part of their daily routine? I know in our conversations with Starbucks, a number of members of their leadership team talked about how easy it is to lose a potential customer through one bad experience. And certainly a bad experience like this, has the capacity to reach a large number of people, not just the specific individual who was targeted. In constructing the employee culture you want, but also in making sure that you're an appealing place for people to shop, to do business, to spend their money. Making sure that your organization is as free from the negative consequences of bias as possible. It is really a business imperative.

Brian Kenny: Obviously, businesses have been thinking a lot about this, right? This is not a new phenomenon. I think we've talked about finding ways to make people aware of their bias so that they are more thoughtful about how they're engaging with customers and with coworkers and such. Francesca, I would ask you, how persistent is this problem? Have we made any headway or is it just as bad as it's always been?

Francesca Gino: So I would coach this in a couple of observations. First of all, one of the ways in which I believe we've made progress and organizations and leaders have made progress is by focusing more often or more attentively to creating work places that are inclusive. In fact, I would say it's hard to think of leaders who don't think that diversity and inclusion are important to their organizations. Where I don't see a lot of progress yet is truly understanding what it takes to be an inclusive leader or to create an inclusive environment. And it's sometimes troubling to leaders and to employees alike to realize that some of these biases happen at the unconscious level. And to realize that our human nature is imperfect. What I think is equally surprising is to think about what can effectively drive change. So there have been a lot of organizations doing unconscious bias training, often not with the results that they expected. And I think that comes down to not truly understanding what solutions are helpful to reducing unconscious bias. The organizations that are making headway or that are being more thoughtful are really organizations that do not think about diversity inclusion as a HR problem. But somebody or leaders who thinks that fundamentally we need to make, I would say inclusion and diversity part of the DNA of the organization. And that requires much more thoughtfulness and requires being willing of being part of a messy journey where you might not get everything right.

Brian Kenny: But Starbucks had that, Howard Schultz had a vision for Starbucks and they focused a lot on this. Didn't they, Katie? Wasn't this something that was important to Starbucks and apparently it didn't take?

Katie Coffman: I think that's one of the really important learnings from this case, because if we look at the history of Starbucks and their mission and values, one of the fundamental principles they had is that Starbucks is going to exist as what they would call a “third place” for their communities. And the idea of a third place is, you have your home, you have their work, Starbucks is going to be a third place where you could really just be. Right. It's welcoming, it's safe, it's inclusive. You can come, you can have a cup of coffee, you can do your work and it's going to feel like one of those safe, special places to you. And that's been a part of their value systems really from the start. And yet even with that type of mindset and a set of policies aimed at achieving that, you can still have this kind of behavior and this kind of outcome. And I think you could make the same analogy when thinking about individuals. Even individuals with really good intentions, who would not view themselves as a racist person can still, because of these unconscious biases end up with actions, with behaviors, with poorly chosen words, doing things to create problems, particularly for underrepresented groups. And so I think part of the recognition here is this really can happen to any organization, to any person. And you have to have a much deeper understanding of the root causes of these types of behaviors and what we can actually do to make those unconscious biases less problematic in our lives and in our workplaces.

Brian Kenny: So to your point a Francesca, this can't just be an HR initiative, right? This has to be an initiative that cuts across the fabric of the entire organization.

Francesca Gino: Exactly. And one of the things I do appreciate in the response to the Philadelphia incident is that Sternberg started a journey. So everybody, especially the press has been very focused on the fact that they ended up closing down their stores on a particular day to do some training. That was about understanding racial injustice and also understanding unconscious bias. But it was really the beginning of a much larger journey. And so it's interesting that maybe that closing the stores was symbolic to get us started, but it was one only one step of a journey that is still continuous. And again, I think that the leaders were going to be really thoughtful about this need… to be ready to take steps that might not be the right ones, but at least to try their best to address issues that might be happening across all parts of the organization. And it's both about the behavior of the leaders and the employees who work in the organizations, but also trying to understand whether there are policies or systems that are becoming, system that systematically reinforce discriminatory behavior potentially. Like in the case of Starbucks, the policies that they introduced at some point about who's a customer and who's not a customer, might in fact, have contributed to, by judgment on the part of the store manager.

Katie Coffman: I completely agree with what Francesca said and I think so much attention has been paid to that May 29th store closure. In my opinion, one of the smartest things they did were these policy changes, right? So really shortly after this incident, they recognized that their policies were maybe the biggest contributing factor to this incident. And in particular, putting the owners and store managers to make distinctions between customers and non-customers in terms of what was going to be permitted in terms of bathroom use. And they gave them much more explicit guidance on what type of behaviors are appropriate and not appropriate in the store and gave them an explicit guide for actually addressing disruptive behavior. That type of de-escalation emphasis and giving that to their employees, their store managers, their partners, so that they were much better position from a policy perspective to actually handle these types of incidents in a much better way.

Brian Kenny: So let's dive into what Starbucks did, because I think that's the basis of a lot of the most salient points in the case. They shut everything down, did they mandate for employees to go to this training? Was it optional or did you have to do it?

Francesca Gino: They did not make it mandatory. So they allowed people to choose and they didn't actually record whether or not you participated. But from the qualitative data that they collected, it seems as if most people were actually there taking the course and the training.

Brian Kenny: And what was the training like? What were they trying to teach?

Katie Coffman: It's incredibly impressive from an operational perspective, both how quickly and how comprehensively they were able to put together this program. So I think the idea was to spend a couple of hours with store managers, store partners, increasing awareness, and doing education around racial bias. And to produce that content, they actually worked with a variety of both internal and external resources, really consulted with experts in this area to try and make that training as impactful as possible. You have 8,000 stores, there's no way you're going to be able to recruit and train and deploy a bias training facilitator for each of those stores, so they created this centralized version of the content that could then be deployed with iPads, accompanied with a guidebook to help store managers actually navigate and lead the discussion within their own stores. They also gave private notebooks to all the employees who would participate so they could answer questions privately, make reflections, and actually take those home with them with hopes that these learnings would last a little bit longer.

Brian Kenny: And were the managers leading their own teams in this exercise? I mean, was it like a cascading type effect?

Francesca Gino: Exactly. So the store manager is in charge of leading the training, paced according to how the people in the store are actually reacting to the content.

Katie Coffman : I'll just add to that too. I think an important part of their approach, and we mentioned this in the case is that all of this is also paid time. Right. And I think that says something about the mindset too. This isn't extracurricular activity that, hey, wouldn't it be great if we got a little bit better on this, maybe you should spend some time with this. This is employees being paid to engage in these important conversations. And I think that sends a really key message to everyone in the organization.

Brian Kenny: So did it work and how did employees respond to it?

Francesca Gino: So measuring success is actually a question that we ask in class when we teach this case, because we're interested and intend to understand how do you know after making such big investments that you're making progress? That in fact you are looking at your employees, you're looking at your leaders and you see that they're treating each other equally, that there is no sign of discrimination. And this is a really hard question to ask, not only to the students in class, but also when we asked it to the leaders themselves. A couple of data points that they brought up that were interesting: first is what seems to be the climate in the stores around actually having these conversations. And the fact that again, the people in the store often mirror the type of communities that they serve made people feel more included because they had more opportunity to talk about their experiences. Or if you look specifically at the store in Philadelphia, that actually had the incident. If you look at it from a profitability standpoint, the year after the incident was quite a good year for them. And so there are elements, maybe not perfect data or the type of objective performance measures that many leaders may like or that Katie and I would love to see when we look at our research and try to understand the effect of a policy change, but there are at least indicators that can help us understand whether this has been successful or not. And if I were to put my scholar's hat on or my instructor's hat on, I would also try to understand if the journey they've been on fundamentally touches on some of the elements that we know are important when we're trying to fight unconscious bias and discriminations. So for example, the presence of information that is counter stereotypical, or trying to increase content or connecting with empathy, with people who look different from you. And so if I keep this element in mind then I would say, I think that they're on a good standing, given the type of conversations that they've started.

Brian Kenny: Katie, let me ask you this question. I'm wondering in the wake of what happened with George Floyd and what feels like a movement at this point, something feels different about what's happening in our country right now. Does this change the inflection of the conversation that you would see yourself having with students around this?

Katie Coffman: One of the things I've taken away from the last couple of weeks, or maybe now months of this social movement, is that the bar for what it means to be a good person in this context is going up. And I think going up in a really good way. It's no longer enough to be someone who's not actively engaging in discrimination. It's now important to actually, I think the term we're seeing a lot is to be anti-racist, right. That you're taking active actions to make the systems, the institutions, the culture around you, one that is less racist and more equitable. When you think about judging Starbucks's response, I think in a lot of ways over the last year now, the bar is going up for whether Starbucks's response is good enough. And I think that's actually a really positive reflection on where we're moving from a societal perspective, which is, we're not just getting rid of problems, but are they actually doing enough to create change? And so I'm really excited to teach this case more in the coming year and hear from our students and from executives of how they see the recent conversations, changing their views of this incident and the response. I think it couldn't be more timely.

Francesca Gino: I also think that there is an aspect of the case that usually doesn't get as much attention or didn't get as much attention in previous sessions that I've taught when I use this case. We focus a lot on how you would react as a leader if you were actually to see something happening like this in your own organizations. So the attention is on the store managers calling the police on these two Black customers. But the story is a little bit more complex and richer. How about the police officers who were there and arrested the two individuals without too many questions about what had happened? And so I think given the current social crisis that we're living through, I think the students, whether MBAs or executives, would point to the role of the officers much more quickly and likely they would also point to the customers who were sitting there watching this unfold and practically doing anything.

Katie Coffman: And there, I would applaud Starbucks too, because in thinking about their response and maybe it didn't stand out at the time, but I can tell you reading back through it now, a lot of the guidance they provided is, who can you call before you call the police? If there's a behavior that's going on that you think needs to be addressed, where can you turn first? Should you actually be turning attention to a mental health professional? Is there a shelter that you need to be connecting with? And all of these other resources. And I think it's just so very connected to the conversations we're having now, the movement to defund the police, that wasn't really part of the mainstream conversation at the time of the incident. And yet I think Starbucks had a lot of foresight to say, if we can avoid the stage where we're even calling the police in the first place, maybe that has the potential to have a real positive impact.

Brian Kenny: One last question for each of you, and this has been really interesting hearing you talk about the case. I think lots of great insights here. But for our listeners, almost all of whom I think are people who are interested in business or practicing business in some way, some are leaders, some are managers, some are somewhere in between. What can they do individually? Because I think a lot of us look at this and it's like boiling the ocean, it seems like such an enormous problem. And what kind of impact could I have? But I would expect that there are some things that people can do practically within their role, no matter what they are. So Katie, I'll ask you to maybe comment on that, what piece of advice you'd like to give and then Francesca, same from you.

Katie Coffman: I think awareness of unconscious bias is an important first step and recognizing the prevalence of it in ourselves and across others that we're going to encounter. And I think that type of awareness is an important first step, but hardly sufficient. And so when do these unconscious biases become most problematic? Well, it's really about these implicit associations, these intuitive decisions we make, these quick decisions we make. So both in our policy design and in our individual actions, can we interrupt that mapping from unconscious bias, implicit association to action. Because it's going to be very hard, I think we've seen in research, you can't just suddenly become someone who has no unconscious bias. But I think the case is much stronger that you can become someone who takes actions and acts with a deliberate hand to make it the case that whatever unconscious bias you have is going to be less likely to impact the decisions you make.

Brian Kenny: Great. Francesca?

Francesca Gino: I was struck in writing this case and talking to the leaders about the reaction that the CEO had, Kevin Johnson, when he was thinking back to the moment he realized this had happened, and it did seem it was discriminatory behavior. And he kept asking himself two questions. One was, what is the right thing to do? How did we prepare our people for this? And I think that that is a very profound question because unconscious bias is in fact pervasive. And as leader, we do play a role in trying to understand it better but also give people the opportunity to have conversations, to try to understand how to pause in the moment and make sure that they're coming up with the right judgment and the right behavior in that particular moment.

Brian Kenny: Great advice. And hopefully there will be other cases forthcoming where companies are showing great examples of how to do this and to succeed at it. Katie and Francesca, thank you so much for joining us on Cold Call.

Francesca Gino: Thank you so much, Brian, for having us.

Katie Coffman: Thank you so much.

Brian Kenny: If you enjoy Cold Call, you might like other podcasts on the HBR Presents network. Whether you're looking for advice on navigating your career, you want the latest thinking in business and management, or you just want to hear what's on the mind of Harvard Business School professors, the HBR Presents network has a podcast for you. Find them on Apple Podcasts or wherever you listen. I'm your host, Brain Kenny, and you've been listening to Cold Call, an official podcast of Harvard Business School on the HBR Presents network.

Brian Kenny is Chief Marketing and Communications Officer at Harvard Business School.

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The Starbucks Incident: a crisis management case study

The starbucks incident: a crisis management case study.

By Rick Kelly

Shortly after opening its first store in 1971, Starbucks began to distinguish itself as a do-the-right-thing kind of retailer. It offered full health care and stock options to employees, embraced diversity and inclusion, created a foundation to support its communities, located stores in underserved areas, promoted certified Fairtrade products, established ethical coffee-sourcing standards and built farmer support centers in coffee-growing regions. Along the way, it also rewarded its investors. Following its initial public offering in 1992, Starbucks has had multiple two-for-one stock splits.

By nearly any measure, Starbucks has been ultra-successful, with now about 28,000 stores worldwide and unmatched influence in the supplier markets. Up until the Philadelphia incident, it’s hard to imagine anyone being mad at Starbucks. Clearly it has walked the social responsibility talk. But when a request to use a restroom in the Philadelphia store escalated into the arrests of the two men who had come there to meet a friend, the public reaction was loud and furious.

A cell phone video of the arrests went viral, and it instantly attracted worldwide attention and accusations of racism. The video showed that the arrestees had done nothing to merit such a fate. What’s a crisis manager to do?

The first consideration in managing any crisis is to avoid making the situation worse. Starbucks accomplished that by immediately recognizing the threat to its reputation , responding quickly, issuing an unequivocal apology (as opposed to “We’re sorry  if  we offended anyone”) and by flying across the country to deliver apologies in person to the men who were arrested.

The company also succeeded in positioning the incident as a “teachable moment.” Starbucks CEO Kevin Johnson, in an ABC interview on the Monday following the incident, repeated the apology, took responsibility and said he wanted to apologize in person to the men and “invite them to join me in finding a way to solve this issue.” The men who had been arrested agreed they “want to make sure this situation doesn’t happen again.” Their settlement this week with the City of Philadelphia is a testament to their constructive intentions.

In the face of an organized protest at the site of the arrests and calls for a national boycott of the company, Johnson announced plans to close 8,000 U.S. stores on May 29 to provide employees with bias sensitivity training. In multiple interviews, he continued to apologize and pledged to identify and address the factors that led to such a dire result. He also insisted that a half-day of sensitivity training was only a first step.

Johnson was right to accept responsibility for the incident. The company’s policies, procedures, training and culture fell short of preventing an outcome that should not have occurred and ran counter to one of the organization’s stated values of “creating a culture of warmth and belonging, where everyone is welcome.”

Whether a place where everyone is welcome should include restroom access for non-customers may be debatable, but insisting that visitors buy something upon arrival or face forcible removal is not a welcoming gesture.  We’re guessing that the company will spend some time thinking about that.

In any event, we offer the following recommendations to those who imagine having to handle a crisis of their own:

• Pay attention to issues that become the subject of heightened public sensitivity. Racial bias and sexual misconduct are leading the pack these days.
• Assess (or hire someone to assess) the vulnerabilities of your organization, and devise a plan for handling the most likely worst-case crisis scenarios.
• Build reputational equity by being responsible as an organization to customers, employees, other stakeholders and the public at large. Starbucks’ record for walking the talk should earn it another chance with most people.
• Assume that it’s not a question of  if  a crisis will occur, but when. And when it does, act quickly and don’t equivocate or make excuses.

Depending on the nature of the crisis, some stakeholders may turn away for good. At the same time, handling a crisis well can strengthen an organization’s relationships and strength.

How will this episode turn out? There’s no doubt that Starbucks was in the wrong, but it acknowledged its failures quickly, accepted responsibility and devised a remedy (or at least a first step). We’re betting that Starbucks will be selling lattes for a long time, and that other organizations will use this episode as a template the next time they find themselves in times of trouble.

Rick Kelly is Triad’s VP of Strategic Communication and directs the firm’s crisis management practice. You can reach him at  [email protected] .

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Starbucks C.E.O. Apologizes After Arrests of 2 Black Men

By Matt Stevens

• April 15, 2018

Two black men walked into a Starbucks in downtown Philadelphia on Thursday afternoon and sat down. Officials said they had asked to use the restroom but because they had not bought anything, an employee refused the request. They were eventually asked to leave, and when they declined, an employee called the police.

Some of what happened next was recorded in a video that has been viewed more than eight million times on Twitter and was described by the chief executive of Starbucks as “very hard to watch.” Details of the episode, which the authorities provided on Saturday, ignited widespread criticism on social media, incited anger among public officials and prompted investigations.

The video shows the men surrounded by several police officers wearing bicycle helmets in the Center City Starbucks. When one officer asks another man whether he is “with these gentlemen,” the man says he is and calls the episode ridiculous.

“What did they get called for?” asks the man, Andrew Yaffe, who is white, referring to the police. “Because there are two black guys sitting here meeting me?”

Moments later, officers escort one of the black men out of the Starbucks in handcuffs. The other soon follows.

The men, who have not been identified, were arrested on suspicion of trespassing. But Starbucks did not want to press charges and the men were later released, Commissioner Richard Ross Jr. of the Philadelphia Police Department said in a recorded statement on Saturday.

The prosecutor’s office in Philadelphia also reviewed the case and declined to charge the men because of “a lack of evidence that a crime was committed,” Benjamin Waxman, a spokesman for the office, said.

The company apologized on Twitter Saturday afternoon. Later that day, while the hashtag #BoycottStarbucks was trending on Twitter, Kevin R. Johnson, the chief executive of Starbucks, released a statement in which he called the situation a “reprehensible outcome.”

Mr. Johnson said he hoped to meet them in person to offer a “face-to-face apology.”

He also pledged to investigate, and to “make any necessary changes to our practices that would help prevent such an occurrence from ever happening again.”

“Starbucks stands firmly against discrimination or racial profiling,” he said. “Regretfully, our practices and training led to a bad outcome — the basis for the call to the Philadelphia Police Department was wrong. Our store manager never intended for these men to be arrested and this should never have escalated as it did.”

A company spokesman late on Saturday would not say whether any employees would face discipline.

A longer video of the episode shows the police talking with the men for at least four minutes before Mr. Yaffe arrives. He informs the police that the men they are about to take into custody are “not trespassing” but instead are “meeting me here.”

“That’s absolutely discrimination,” Mr. Yaffe said in the video. He declined to comment on Saturday.

In his statement, Commissioner Ross defended his officers, noting they had asked the men to leave three times because employees had said they were trespassing. The men refused, he said.

“These officers had legal standing to make this arrest,” Commissioner Ross said. “These officers did absolutely nothing wrong. They followed policy, they did what they were supposed to do, they were professional in all their dealings with these gentlemen — and instead they got the opposite back.

“I will say that as an African-American male, I am very aware of implicit bias,” he continued. “We are committed to fair and unbiased policing, and anything less than that will not be tolerated in this department.”

About 700 of the department’s 6,300 officers are equipped with body cameras, he added, but the officers involved were not wearing them.

Jim Kenney, the mayor of Philadelphia, blamed Starbucks, saying that the episode “appears to exemplify what racial discrimination looks like in 2018.”

“ Starbucks has issued an apology, but that is not enough,” he said in a statement . He said he has asked the Philadelphia Commission on Human Relations to examine the company’s policies and procedures.

Starbucks said such a review was already underway.

“I know our store managers and partners work hard to exceed our customers’ expectations every day — which makes this very poor reflection on our company all the more painful,” Mr. Johnson said in his statement. He added: “You can and should expect more from us. We will learn from this and be better.”

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Starbucks apologizes to Black customer asked to wait outside

By Khristopher J. Brooks

Updated on: March 25, 2021 / 8:58 AM / MoneyWatch

Starbucks is facing another incident of alleged racial discrimination, this time in California where a Black man said he was told to leave one of the coffee chain's San Jose locations because it was overcrowded under COVID-19 restrictions. 

Bryce Ward told an ABC News affiliate that he left the store at the request of a Starbucks manager. Other customers, who were not Black, then walked into the store and were not asked to leave, KGO-TV reported . Ward, a barber from San Francisco, said the incident happened March 15 and that he believes he was asked to leave the store because he's Black.

"I was the only Black [person] in there. I don't know what was going through her mind," Ward told KGO-TV, referring to the female manager.

Ward further detailed his experience at the San Jose Starbucks in a lengthy Instagram video. Ward said a cashier asked him to wait outside for his order, but two women left the store before he could exit. With the women departing, Ward said the Starbucks did not have so many customers that his presence would exceed the store's capacity limit, so he remained inside the Starbucks. It was then, Ward said, that a manager yelled at him to leave the store. 

View this post on Instagram A post shared by Bryce | Ultrapreneur (@thebrycedupree)

"I'm not saying she hunted me down because I'm Black, I'm just stating the facts," Ward said in the video, adding that he demanded a refund. "This is Starbucks. You guys are supposed to take pride in how you treat your customers."

Ward told CBS MoneyWatch that he spent the morning of March 15 exercising at a San Jose fitness center and decided to grab a Grande Caramel Apple Spice after his workout. Ward said that was the first time he visited the San Jose location. 

Ward left his phone number with another manager at the store after voicing his complaint. A district manager called him that night to talk about the incident, he said. The district manager asked Ward what he wanted done about the situation and he replied "I just don't want this to happen to someone else because right now I'm hurt."

Starbucks apologized to him for his experience, but a Starbucks spokesman told CBS MoneyWatch that the manager's request that he leave the store was not racially motivated. Starbucks acknowledges that the store's employees could have done a better job at thoughtfully explaining the capacity limit to Ward, the spokesman said.

The Starbucks spokesman said the company did an internal investigation and found that employees also asked others customers to wait outside. The spokesman said he wasn't sure if the other customers exited when asked. 

Since the incident, the San Jose Starbucks employees have been retrained on "how to approach the situation differently, especially when asking people to leave for capacity limits," the spokesman told CBS MoneyWatch in a statement. 

In 2018, Starbucks apologized to a customer for a reported incident at a store in La Cañada Flintridge, California. A Starbucks staffer allegedly wrote "Beaner" — a demeaning word used to describe Latinos — on his cup, the San Jose Mercury News reported .

A month prior to that incident, Starbucks  CEO Kevin Johnson  apologized to two Black men after they were arrested while inside a  Starbucks location in Philadelphia. Rashon Nelson and Donte Robinson said they arrived early at the Starbucks before a business meeting but police officers showed up shortly thereafter. Starbucks has since retrained its staff on how to eliminate racial bias, the company said.

Khristopher J. Brooks is a reporter for CBS MoneyWatch covering business, consumer and financial stories that range from economic inequality and housing issues to bankruptcies and the business of sports.

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Starbucks settles EEOC discrimination case, as Eric Holder reviews diversity progress

Report: coffee chain gave employees the opportunity 'to feel seen and heard,'.

An annual independent review of  Starbucks  compiled by former Attorney General Eric Holder praised the coffee chain's commitment to diversity amid the coronavirus pandemic and an election year with widespread protests against racial discrimination.

At the same time, the coffee chain also disclosed it has settled with the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC) to "resolve allegations, dating back to 2007, that Starbucks’ promotion practices discriminated against some of its store partners on the basis of race and national origin" as detailed in the report.

Reviewing the past year, the company gave employees the opportunity "to feel seen and heard and to address partner needs," according to the company's 2021 Civil Rights Assessment.

Holder pointed to numerous company efforts from organization virtual forums allocated for employees to "share their perspectives and feelings regarding racial injustice," updating the dress code to allow for the expression of the Black Lives Matter movement and creating a mentorship program focused on connecting Black, Indigenous and people of color to senior leaders in the company.

READ THE FULL REPORT HERE

CEO Kevin Johnson said in a statement Wednesday that the report is meant to assess the company's "commitment to civil rights."

STARBUCKS AIMS TO INCREASE CORPORATE WORKFORCE DIVERSITY, COMMITS OVER $1.5M IN GRANTS TO NONPROFITS

In 2019, the report was used to understand and mitigate implicit bias in its stores. Its 2020 report dove deeper into its corporate strategies following protests, some peaceful and others violent, condemning police brutality following the death of George Floyd, who died in police custody.

"Following difficult and traumatic events that consumed the nation — all of which uniquely affected persons of color — Starbucks created new digital forums to better listen to and understand the needs of Starbucks’ partners," the report read.

A customer walks out of the first Starbucks store, Tuesday, July 7, 2020, at Pike Place Market in Seattle. (AP Photo/Ted S. Warren)

STARBUCKS CHANGES POLICY TO ALLOW BLACK LIVES MATTER T-SHIRTS

After Ahmaud Arbery was shot and killed in Georgia in February 2020, Starbucks organized a virtual forum for partners to support one another and share their perspectives. This translated into a "series of courageous conversations" which were created to offer care and support following tragic events from the deaths of George Floyd and Breonna Taylor as well as the impact of COVID-19 on communities of color.

Starbucks, prompted by requests from employees, updated its dress code  in June to allow partners across the country to show support for Black Lives Matter by wearing BLM T-shirts, pins, facemasks and hats.

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Holder also said the company is continuing its commitment to have employees who identify as Black, Indigenous and people of color represent at least 30% of its corporate workforce at all levels and for people of color represent at least 40% of retail and manufacturing roles by 2025.

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Over the past year, the company began publicly reporting more detailed workforce diversity data as part of its commitment to be more transparent and tied executive compensation with the company's success in achieving its diversity goals. That decision was a way for holding senior leaders individually accountable to drive inclusion and sustainability at Starbucks, according to the report.

"I want to be very clear: racism and discrimination have no place at Starbucks. Not with customers. Not with partners," Johnson said.

The report recommends the company publishes periodic updates to measure progress and continuing to survey employee sentiment regarding equity, diversity and inclusion to help guide the company moving forward.

Starbucks Equity, Inclusion and Diversity Timeline

August 01, 2022 • 14 min read

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A Culture of Belonging

Each Starbucks store is the heart of a neighborhood, and we aspire to make each one a welcoming and inclusive third place. From our early decision to offer healthcare to part-time workers to our commitment to support diverse hiring and economic development through our community store initiative — we have been dedicated to creating not just opportunity, but equal opportunity. Through our community partnerships, feedback from our partners and customers, and counsel from civil rights and community leaders, Starbucks will continue our journey to be a place where everyone is welcome. Here are some of our milestones along the way:

Our Mission: "With every cup, with every conversation, with every community – we nurture the limitless possibilities of human connection."

August 2022.

To show our support for diversity in college admissions and giving students of color an equal chance to access higher education, Starbucks joined other businesses and organizations to file an amicus brief to the Supreme Court supporting universities’ flexibility to consider race in admissions to promote student body diversity.

• Starbucks joins the Economic Opportunity Coalition in partnership with the public, private, and the social services sectors to address economic disparities in our communities and accelerate economic opportunity in historically marginalized communities. Starbucks will contribute to the coalition’s efforts through our ongoing leadership on the Community Resilience Fund .
• Starbucks joins more than 170 organizations and the Human Rights Campaign in urging the U.S. Senate to pass the Respect for Marriage Act .
• Starbucks is recognized as one of Forbes Best Employers for Women in 2022 .
• Starbucks earned a 100% on the Disability Equality Index by Disability:IN for the sixth time, making us a Best Place to Work for Disability Inclusion.
• Starbucks announces plans to design, test and scale more inclusive design standards and experiences across its store portfolio with the goal of ensuring that physical and digital Starbucks environments will meet an elevated standard of accessibility by 2030.
• The Starbucks Foundation commits to uplift 1 million women and girls in origin communities by 2030. These grants promote women’s leadership, economic opportunities and access to clear water, sanitation and hygiene (WASH) in coffee-, tea- and cocoa-growing communities in 17 countries.

January 2022

• Starbucks announces launch of a leadership accelerator program beginning with BIPOC partners, focused on empowering partner capacity for self-promotion, advocacy and career navigation
• Starbucks sets goals to increase annual spend with diverse suppliers to $1.5B by 2030.
• Starbucks announces it will issue $21 million to seven community development financial institutions (CDFIs) as part of its Community Resilience Fund.
• The Starbucks Foundation shares impact results from its more than $5 million investment in eight nonprofits supporting BIPOC youth , reported to support more than 100,000 youth across the country. 

November 2021

Starbucks graduates first cohort of partners in the inaugural mentorship program.

• Starbucks donates $1.7 million to Feeding America to support equitable food access grants, designed to help food banks provide nutritious food to households with BIPOC individuals residing in communities experiencing high rates of food insecurity.
• Starbucks is recognized as a Best Place to Work for Disability Inclusion by scoring 100 out of 100 on the  Disability Equality Index  (DEI).

New large-print and Braille menus are made available in all stores in the U.S. and Canada. Starbucks worked with the National Braille Press to create the new menus to make stores more accessible for blind and low-vision customers.

• Starbucks publishes its third Civil Rights Assessment conducted by Covington & Burling LLP under the leadership of former U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder, Jr. The report is an objective evaluation that 1) provides a factual and honest review of the company’s journey in inclusion, diversity and equity and 2) helps track progress over time to drive truly lasting change. Read the report  here . 
• Starbucks  shared  that last year it once again achieved and maintained 100% pay equity by race and gender for similar roles in the U.S., and 100% gender equity in pay in China, Canada, and other company operated global markets including Austria, Great Britain, Italy and Switzerland. Learn more about reasons for the gender pay gap and the best practices and tools Starbucks uses to close the gap  here .
• Starbucks begins offering free Aira service in all U.S. stores in partnership with San Diego-based Aira Tech Corp. Aira connects blind and low-vision people to trained visual interpreters who provide instant access to visual information through a third-party smartphone app.
• Starbucks signs onto the Disability:IN pledge, Are You In , committing to advance disability inclusion in the workplace.

January 2021

• Starbucks receives a 100 percent score on the Human Rights Campaign Corporate Equality Index based on corporate policies and practices for LGBTQ+ equality for the eighth consecutive year and eleventh year overall.
• Starbucks announces plan to invest $100 million to create the  Starbucks Community Resilience Fund  focused on advancing racial equity and environmental resilience by supporting small business growth and community development projects in BIPOC neighborhoods.
• In honor of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.’s legacy,  partners with the Smithsonian’s National Museum of African American History and Culture  to share the museum’s educational resources and digital initiatives like the Freedmen’s Bureau Transcription Project. 

O ctober 2020

Starbucks shares next steps it’s taking to advance racial and social equity as part of its ongoing journey to create a welcoming and inclusive Third Place. These commitments include:  

• Launching a mentorship program connecting BIPOC (Black, Indigenous and People of Color) partners to senior leaders and investing in strategic partnerships with professional organizations that focus on the development of BIPOC talent. 
• Disclosing data reflecting the diversity of our  current workforce .  
• Setting and tracking annual inclusion and diversity goals of achieving BIPOC representation of at least 30 percent at all corporate levels and at least 40 percent of all retail and manufacturing roles by 2025.  
• Connecting the building of inclusive and diverse teams to our executive compensation program. 
• Joining peer organizations in the Board Diversity Action Alliance committed to racially and ethnically diverse representation on corporate boards of directors.
• Establishing Inclusion and Diversity Executive Council to provide internal governance to integrate inclusion and diversity throughout the organization.  

In addition, the company announced the rollout of $1.5 million in Neighborhood Grants from The Starbucks Foundation prioritizing grassroots and community-based nonprofit organizations focused on local impact. These grants aim to uplift organizations led by and that serve Black communities and will support more than 400 local nonprofit organizations across the country. The Foundation will also invest $5 million to launch a two-year initiative focused on supporting nonprofits that serve BIPOC youth.  

The Starbucks Foundation commits $1 million in Neighborhood Grants to promote racial equity and creating more inclusive and just communities. Nominated by Starbucks partners, and with input from civil rights leaders, these grants will support efforts in over 100 cities and towns across the United States.

Throughout its 49-year history, Starbucks partners have come together for one another in the aftermath of hateful incidents. As part of an ongoing commitment to create a sense of inclusion and belonging, Starbucks launches an internal series of courageous conversations addressing difficult topics and to help increase partners understanding of themselves and others.

On May 30, more than 2,000 partners and their families came together virtually to join a conversation about the murders of George Floyd, Ahmaud Arbery and Breonna Taylor and other racial injustices that have shaken the entire country. Throughout the dialogue partners shared stories, expressed emotions, and supported one another. As ceo Kevin Johnson said in a letter to partners: “While we may not have all the answers, we know the path forward requires these courageous conversations with one another. As I shared at the close of today’s meeting it is, in part, our promise to one another as partners to live our mission and values daily.”

Starbucks donates a combined $100,000 to the Human Rights Campaign and the National Center for Transgender Equality in honor of Pride Month to aid in their support for vulnerable members of the LGTBQ+ community due to the impacts of COVID-19.

February 2020

Starbucks publishes the 2019 assessment on Civil Rights, Equity, Diversity and Inclusion conducted by Covington & Burling LLP, under the leadership of the former Attorney General Eric Holder. The report, which reviews the company’s progress since the 2018 report , evaluates Starbucks ongoing efforts to promote equity, diversity and inclusion and how this supports the company’s Mission and Values. 

November 2019

Starbucks shares its median pay gaps by gender globally, and by gender and race in the US. In 2019 the median pay for women globally is 98.3% of the median for men. In the U.S., the median pay ratio is 100% for women and 100% for people of color.

TATA Starbucks Private Limited in India achieves 100 percent pay equity  for women and men. Women now make up 29 percent of Starbucks’ workforce in India, a key gender diversity milestone toward the goal of 40 percent by 2022. 

Starbucks opens the  Penang Signing Store in Malaysia , creating career opportunities for Deaf and Hard of Hearing partners (employees) while also serving as a gathering spot for the area’s deaf community. This is the company’s fourth signing store, with two in Malaysia, one in Guangzhou, China, and one in Washington D.C. 

October 2019

The Starbucks Foundation awards $1.4 million in Opportunity for All grants, to help  63 programs  across the U.S. create pathways to jobs and careers for students, young adults and other people facing barriers.

Starbucks announces  it will invest $10 million  to support entrepreneurs, small business owners and nonprofits in Chicago. The loan will be distributed in January by a network of mission-based lenders called community development financial institutions, which work to revitalize struggling neighborhoods on the city’s South and West sides.

September 2019

Starbucks releases  Siren’s Blend , a new core coffee inspired and created by trailblazing women in the coffee industry.

Starbucks launches its “To Be Welcoming”  Curriculum, in partnership with Arizona State University. The free 15-course online class is designed to address bias and encourage more meaningful conversations around our shared human experience.

Starbucks opens its 14 th Community Store in Jonesboro, Ga. , part of an initiative to support economic development in diverse, underserved areas of the country.

The company commits to hiring 5,000 veterans and military spouses annually . Starbucks has hired more than 25,000 veterans and military spouses to date, more than doubling its initial promise to hire 10,000 by 2018. 

Shonda Rhimes, the award-winning creator of hit TV shows Grey’s Anatomy and Scandal , shares the importance of storytelling in our culture. Starbucks invited Rhimes to be part of its Third Place Development Series , the company’s commitment to creating a more welcoming and inclusive experience for partners and customers.

Starbucks is recognized as a Best Place to Work for Disability Inclusion by scoring 100 on the Disability Equality Index (DEI).

Starbucks joined over 200 companies to file a joint amicus brief to the Supreme Court in support of LGBTQ rights. The landmark briefing argues that existing federal civil rights law should protect LGTBQ people from discrimination in contexts ranging from employment to housing, healthcare and education. To file the brief the company worked with prominent civil rights groups the Human Rights Campaign, Lambda Legal, Out & Equal, Out Leadership, and Freedom for All Americans.

Starbucks also joined the Human Rights Campaign’s Business Coalition in support of the Equality Act, a bill that would protect LGBTQ people from discrimination in housing, the workplace, public accommodations, and other settings under federal law. The Equality Act has since passed in the U.S. House of Representatives.

Starbucks’ 13 th Community Store opens in New Orleans, La. , creating more than 30 jobs in the area.

The Starbucks Foundation celebrates Pride Month by matching up to $250,000 in donations to Lady Gaga’s Born This Way Foundation. The money goes towards improving access to mental health resources for LGBTQ+ communities.

Starbucks introduces opportunity for new and current partners to self-identify with the company as LGBTQ (lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, queer) similar to other identifications, such as disability, refugee, veteran and military spouse. The move was the result of efforts by the Pride Alliance partner network to create another way to build upon the company’s commitment to the inclusion and diversity of all partners.

On Equal Pay Day, Starbucks and 25 other U.S. employers in the Employers for Pay Equity consortium join to agree to a shared set of Pay Equity Principles to help eliminate the gender pay gap.

February 2019

China and Canada, two of Starbucks largest international markets, achieve 100 percent gender pay equity one year after Starbucks announced 100 percent pay equity in the United States .

January 2019

Following a recommendation in our Ci vil Rights Assessment , Starbucks published its principles on upholding the third place . This public statement describes the key principles and responsibilities of making a welcoming space for all, including our zero-tolerance position on discrimination, that will continue to guide Starbucks as the company holds itself accountable to them.

November 2018

Starbucks opens its 12 th Community Store in Dallas .

On Veterans Day, the company announces 21,000 veterans and military spouses have been hired since creating the military hiring commitment in 2013, and that  50 Military Family Stores , which focus on honoring and hiring veterans and military spouses, have been dedicated around the nation.   

October 2018

The first U.S. Starbucks signing store opens in Washington, D.C., providing employment opportunities for Deaf and hard of hearing partners and led by partners fluent in American Sign Language.

Hire! Philly job and resource fair creates career opportunities and provides career preparation resources for 1,700 Philadelphians. Starbucks serves on the Advisory Board of the Hire! Philly coalition – a group of employers from the Philadelphia region dedicated to creating workforce opportunities.

September 2018

Starbucks announces a partnership with Arizona State University to develop an open-sourced curriculum to address forms of bias.

August 2018

The company opens a Community Store in Birmingham, Ala. , to support economic revitalization and diverse hiring.

The Starbucks Foundation announces  Opportunity For All Grant recipients , donating $1.3 million to 47 organizations across the country that focus on supporting underserved communities and youth.

Starbucks rolls out the first of a series of Third Place Development training modules designed for all partners that continues our commitment to address bias.

The company joins U.S. Chamber Foundation’s campaign to hire 100,000 military spouses.

Starbucks announces the company’s health insurance plans cover not only gender reassignment surgery, which had been covered since 2012, but also a host of other procedures for transgender partners in the U.S. that were previously deemed cosmetic, and therefore not covered.

Starbucks broadens its health insurance options for transgender partners to not only include gender reassignment surgery (which had been covered since 2013), but also a host of procedures that were previously considered cosmetic.

Starbucks launches the Welcoming Refugees Alliance, partner network dedicated to welcoming and empowering refugee partners and allies, on World Refugee Day.

The company closes 8,000 stores in the U.S. for company-wide implicit bias training and makes the curriculum publicly available .

Starbucks announces its new Use of the Third Place policy , defining a customer as anyone who enters a Starbucks space regardless of whether they make a purchase.

The company connects with 2,600 young people at the Atlanta Job and Resource Fair .

Rashon Nelson and Donte Robinson are arrested in a Starbucks Philadelphia store. Kevin Johnson, Starbucks chief executive officer, calls the outcome “reprehensible” and publicly apologizes , saying “This is not who we are.”

Starbucks announces 100 percent pay equity across race and gender for U.S. partners, sets global goal.

Starbucks opens Community Store in Bed-Stuy, Brooklyn.

December 2017

New Community Stores open in Dallas and Trenton, N.J. , part of the company’s strategy to invest in underserved communities across the U.S.

October 2017

A new  Community Store opens in Miami Gardens, Fla., to support local revitalization and youth hiring.

September 2017

Starbucks participates in Opportunity Job and Resource Fair in Washington, D.C.

August 2017

The White Center (Seattle) Community Store opens.

Starbucks opens Community Store in Long Beach, Calif.

The company participates in Dallas Opportunity Job and Resource Fair.

Starbucks expands its Opportunity Youth commitment to 100,000 hires by 2020, after reaching initial goal of 10,000 hires by 2018

Starbucks expands its hiring commitment to 25,000 service members, veterans and military spouses by 2025. Expands hiring commitment to 25,000 service members, veterans and military spouses by 2025, after reaching milestone of 10,000 hires and expands the number of Military Family Stores to 132 by 2022.

Community Store opens in East Baltimore .

January 2017

Starbucks announces its commitment to hire 10,000 refugees around the world by 2022 .

November 2016

Starbucks partners work with the local Seattle business community and Mary’s Place to raise $3 million to bring an estimated 500 unsheltered King County families indoors .

September 2016

The company opens Community Store in Chicago’s Englewood neighborhood .

August 2016

A Community Store in Phoenix opens with an in-store training center.

Starbucks joins more than 200 other business leaders to urge equal treatment for the LGBTQ community. Lucy Helm (now chief partner officer) shares a letter to partners underscoring  Starbucks commitment to inclusion .

The company participates in Opportunity Job and Resource Fair in Seattle.

Starbucks signs White House Fair Chance Business Pledge in support of eliminating barriers for those with a criminal record and pledging to creating a pathway for a second chance.

Starbucks opens its first store in Ferguson, Mo. , as part of a commitment to provide local jobs, training opportunities for youth and support traditionally underserved communities with lower socioeconomic status backgrounds.

Opens its first Community Store in Jamaica, Queen, N.Y. as part of a national effort to engage youth in diverse communities.

The company joins TurboVote Challenge to encourage U.S. civic participation.

February 2016

Starbucks participates in Opportunity Job and Resource Fair in Los Angeles.

January 2016

The  Starbucks Youth Leadership Council is established to help shape the company’s social impact strategies.

November 2015

Seattle Police Department’s Safe Place program rolls out to Starbucks stores in Seattle, with special designation as secure places for victims of anti-LGBTQ-related crimes and harassment. More than 2,000 store partners receive SPD Safe Place training and window clings identify the 100 company-owned stores in the greater Seattle area.

Starbucks announces it has hired 5,500 veterans and military spouses; extends college benefit and announces a new pay-for-service-benefit, which will cover up to 80 hours of pay each year for service obligations.

October 2015

The company participates in Opportunity Job and Resource Fair in Phoenix.

September 2015

The first class graduates from Starbucks Inclusion Academy , a program to train people with disabilities, at its York (Pa.) Roasting Plant.

August 2015

Starbucks takes part in the first-ever Opportunity Fair & Forum to reach 4,000 young people in Chicago. The event marked the official launch of the 100,000 Opportunities Initiative, a coalition of Starbucks and leading companies committed to engaging 100,000 young people in jobs, internships and apprenticeships.

On the 25 th anniversary of the Americans with Disabilities Act , Starbucks affirms commitment to access and disability inclusion.

The company announces plans to open Community Stores in diverse, under-represented neighborhoods in 15 U.S. cities , working with local suppliers, nonprofits and civic leaders to create new opportunities for economic development and community engagement.

Starbucks writes Sen. Cory Booker in support of “ban the box” legislation to extend a fair chance to millions of Americans .

The company commits to hiring at least 10,000 Opportunity Youth by 2018 and leads the 100,000 Opportunities Initiative, a coalition of leading companies to create pathways to employment for young people.

Starbucks scores 100 out of 100 on a new Disability Equality Index survey , a joint initiative of the American Association of People with Disabilities and the U.S. Business Leadership Network.

The company applauds the U.S. Supreme Court’s ruling on marriage equality.

The Starbucks College Achievement Plan is expanded to offer full tuition coverage for all four years of an undergraduate degree for qualifying U.S. Starbucks partners. Commits to 25,000 partners graduating by 2025.

Race Together, inspired by Partner Open Forums, Starbucks seeks to broaden the dialog about Race in America with an initiative to aimed at stimulating conversation, empathy and compassion toward one another.

January 2015

The Starbucks Inclusion Academy , an on-the-job training program for people with disabilities, is launched.

In order to assist transitioning partners in self-identification, Starbucks updated its technology systems to ensure that documentation in stores reflect a partner’s “known as” name or nickname by which they want to be addressed that is consistent with the applicant’s gender identity or expression.

Starbucks Young Professionals launches. It later becomes Millennial Partner Network and is now Next at Starbucks.

December 2014

Starbucks holds Partner Open Forum at the company’s Seattle headquarters to discuss racial tension in America. It would be the first of many held in cities across the country.

November 2014

The first Military Community Stores open near military bases in Lakewood, Wash. and San Antonio, Tex.

Partners who have served in the military, as well as their spouses, have the option to have the American flag, their name and military affiliation embroidered .

The company creates the Starbucks College Achievement Plan with Arizona State University to offer qualifying U.S. partners the opportunity to complete a college degree through ASU’s online degree program.

November 2013

The company announces its commitment to hire 10,000 veterans and military spouses by 2018 .

October 2013

Starbucks creates a store partnership model with community organizations in Harlem, New York and Los Angeles.

The company supports transgender partners by adding coverage of gender reassignment surgery to the company’s health benefits.

Chairman and chief executive officer Howard Schultz makes a vocal statement on diversity and equality during a spontaneous exchange at the 2013 Starbucks Annual Meeting of Shareholders. In response to a stockholder who voiced his view that the company had lost customers because of its support for marriage equality, Schultz said, “Not every decision is an economic decision. The lens in which we are making that decision is through the lens of our people.”

India Partner Network launches.

February 2012

Starbucks files an amicus brief in the U.S. Supreme Court case challenging the Defense of Marriage Act.

September 2011

The first Starbucks Card with Braille lettering debuts.

China Club (later renamed China and Asia Partner Network ) is recognized as a partner network. 

Starbucks hosts its first Coffee with a Cop event , and would go on to host more than a thousand events in neighborhoods around the United States.

Armed Forces Network is added to the partner network program .

The company adopts the new mission statement “To inspire and nurture the human spirit – one person, one cup and one neighborhood at a time.”

The Women’s Development Network, which would later be renamed Women’s Impact Network launches.

Partner Network program launches for Starbucks partners. Pride Alliance, Black Partner Network, Hora del Café and Access Alliance are the first networks established under the new program.

China Club begins hosting Lunar New Year celebrations. It later becomes China Asia Pacific Network and is now Pan-Asian Partner Network.

Deaf Partner Group launches. It later becomes Access Alliance and is now the Disability Advocacy Network .

Hora Del Café initially launches as a way for partners to speak Spanish and connect over coffee.

Starbucks works with the Red Cross to send its first shipment of coffee overseas to troops. Members of the Starbucks Armed Forces Network (AFN) have regularly organized care package shipments since then.

The Human Rights Campaign’s first Corporate Equality Index includes Starbucks in its national benchmarking tool on LGBT corporate policies and practices. Each year since 2002, Starbucks has scored 85 percent or higher, including a perfect score of 100 percent in 2016 and designation as one of the “Best Places to Work for LGBT Equality.”

Starbucks opens the first Urban Coffee Opportunities store in Ladera Heights, Calif. as part of joint-venture partnership with Magic Johnson to create economic opportunity and a stronger sense of community in underserved neighborhoods. Over the tenure of the 12-year partnership, more than 100 UCO locations were opened in cities including Los Angeles, New York, Seattle, Chicago, Denver, Detroit, Atlanta, San Diego, San Francisco and Washington, D.C.

Establishes the CUP Fund , an emergency financial assistance fund for partners.

The first Starbucks LGBTQ partner group forms. The group goes on to become the Starbucks Pride Partner Network and grows to include thousands of partners in the United States, Canada and around the world.

Starbucks becomes the first privately owned U.S. company to offer a stock option program that includes part-time employees.

Starbucks creates a new healthcare policy for employees with terminal illnesses to bridge the gap between the time they can no longer work until they become eligible for government insurance. The policy was inspired by Jim Kerrigan, a longtime partner who was unable to work due to the advanced stages of AIDS. Kerrigan died a year later, but hundreds of partners would continue to march in his memory to support AIDS research and programs.

The company unveils Starbucks mission statement “To establish Starbucks as the premier purveyor of the finest coffee in the world while maintaining our uncompromising principles as we grow.”

Starbucks offers full health benefits to eligible full- and part-time employees, including coverage for same-sex domestic partners.

Starbucks opens first store in Seattle’s Pike Place Market.

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Meet Me at Starbucks

Two black men were arrested after an employee called the police on them, prompting Starbucks to implement “racial-bias” training across all its stores.

On April 12, 2018, at a Starbucks location in Philadelphia, two black men, Rashon Nelson and Donte Robinson, were waiting for a friend, Andrew Yaffe. Nelson and Robinson were entrepreneurs and were going to discuss business investment opportunities with Yaffe, a white real estate developer. As they waited, an employee asked if she could help them. They said “no,” that they were just waiting for a business meeting. Then a manager told Nelson that he couldn’t use the restroom because he was not a paying customer.

Because the two men had not purchased anything yet, a store manager called police, even though Robinson had been a customer at the store for almost a decade and both men had used the store location for business meetings before. At least six Philadelphia Police Department officers arrived. The police officers did not ask the men any questions; they just demanded that they leave immediately. They declined. The police officers then proceeded to arrest the men for trespassing. As the arrest occurred, Mr. Yaffe arrived. Seeing what was happening, Yaffe said:

“Why would they be asked to leave? Does anyone else think this is ridiculous? It’s absolute discrimination.”

The two men were taken out in handcuffs. They were taken to the police station, photographed, and fingerprinted. They were held for almost nine hours before being released from custody. Prosecutors decided that there was insufficient evidence to charge the men with a crime.

After a video of the arrest went viral, Starbucks CEO Kevin Johnson released a statement:

“We apologize to the two individuals and our customers and are disappointed this led to an arrest. We take these matters seriously and clearly have more work to do when it comes to how we handle incidents in our stores. We are reviewing our policies and will continue to engage with the community and the police department to try to ensure these types of situations never happen in any of our stores.”

Johnson then announced that every company-owned Starbucks location in the nation would close on May 29, 2018, for “racial-bias education.” When one customer complained on Facebook that closing the stores because of just one incident seemed overkill, Starbucks responded:

“There are countless examples of implicit bias resulting in discrimination against people of color, both in and outside our stores. Addressing bias is crucial in ensuring that all our customers feel safe and welcome in our stores.”

A similar complaint about closing thousands of stores because of the actions of a handful of employees prompted this response from Starbucks: “Our goal is to make our stores a safe and welcoming place for everyone, and we have failed. This training is crucial in making sure we meet our goal.”

Discussion Questions

1. Do you think the manager of the Starbucks in Philadelphia thought of herself as racist?

2. Do you think that what happened to Nelson and Robinson would have happened had they been white?

3. What stereotypes were invoked in this case and by whom?

4. How did stereotyping influence and/or frame the situation for the manager? For the police? For bystanders?

5. What is your opinion about Starbucks’ response to the arrest of Nelson and Robinson?

6. Will Starbucks’ training session on implicit bias have a beneficial impact?

Related Videos

Implicit Bias

Implicit bias exists when people unconsciously hold attitudes toward others or associate stereotypes with them.

Bibliography

“Starbucks CEO Apologizes After Employee Calls Police on Black Men Waiting at a Table,” https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/business/wp/2018/04/14/starbucks-apologizes-after-employee-calls-police-on-black-men-waiting-at-a-table/?noredirect=on&utm_term=.58c312135cfa

“Starbucks to Angry Facebookers: We Can’t Deny This is a Race Issue,” https://www.fastcompany.com/40561997/starbucks-to-angry-facebookers-we-cant-deny-this-is-a-race-issue

“Black Men Arrested at Philadelphia Starbucks Say They Feared for Their Lives,” https://www.cbsnews.com/news/starbucks-arrest-rashon-nelson-donte-robinson-feared-for-their-lives/

“Is This How Discrimination Ends?” https://www.theatlantic.com/science/archive/2017/05/unconscious-bias-training/525405/

“Does Starbucks Understand the Science of Racial Bias?” https://www.theatlantic.com/science/archive/2018/05/starbucks-unconscious-bias-training/559415/

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Starbucks executives, directors are sued over diversity policies

Aug 31 (Reuters) - Starbucks Corp (SBUX.O) executives and directors have been sued by a conservative think tank that believes the coffee chain's efforts to promote diversity amount to racial discrimination.

In a complaint filed on Tuesday, the National Center for Public Policy Research objected to Starbucks' setting hiring goals for Blacks and other people of color, awarding contracts to "diverse" suppliers and advertisers, and tying executive pay to diversity.

The plaintiff, a Starbucks shareholder, said those policies require the company to make race-baced decisions that benefit minorities, and violate federal and state civil rights laws.

Thirty-five current and former Starbucks executives and directors, including interim Chief Executive Howard Schultz, are among the defendants.

The diversity push "benefits them personally to pose as virtuous advocates of 'Inclusion, Diversity, and Equity,' even as it harms the company and its owners," the complaint said.

Starbucks did not immediately respond on Wednesday to requests for comment.

The Seattle-based company had 34,948 stores worldwide as of July 3, including 17,050 in North America.

Many companies have been boosting their focus on diversity and training, including after the May 2020 killing of George Floyd by a Minneapolis police officer.

In October 2020, Starbucks said it would aim for Black people, indigenous people and other people of color to hold at least 30% of U.S. corporate jobs and 40% of U.S. retail and manufacturing jobs by 2025, and tie executive pay to its diversity efforts.

Then in January, Starbucks said it planned to nearly double its annual spending with diverse suppliers and vendors to $1.5 billion by 2030, and committed to allocating 15% of this year's ad budget to minority-owned and "targeted" media companies.

Tuesday's lawsuit was filed in a Washington state court in Spokane.

It seeks to void Starbucks' diversity policies, and have the defendants or their insurers pay damages to the company.

The case is National Center for Public Policy Research v Schultz et al, Spokane County Superior Court, No. 22-2-02945-32.

Our Standards: The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles.

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Venture Global LNG, which is building three multi-billion dollar U.S. liquefied natural gas processing plants, is sparring with two customers of its first project over mechanical failures that have prevented commercial deliveries a year after initial shipments began.

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Starbucks: Managing a Racism Scandal

• By: Xinhua Wittmann
• Publisher: University of Zurich
• Publication year: 2019
• Online pub date: January 04, 2021
• Discipline: Public Relations , Crisis Management
• DOI: https:// doi. org/10.4135/9781529734997
• Contains: Document | Supplementary Resources | Teaching Notes Length: 3,598 words Region: Northern America Country: United States of America Industry: Food and beverage service activities Originally Published In: Wittman , X. ( 2019 ). Starbucks: Managing a racism scandal . S2CSC 026-19-05. Zurich, Switzerland : Swiss Chinese Case Study Center, University of Zurich . Organization: Starbucks Type: Indirect case info Organization Size: Large info Online ISBN: 9781529734997 Copyright: © 2019 The Swiss Chinese Case Study Center of the University of Zurich. More information Less information

Teaching Notes

Supplementary resources.

On April 12, 2018, two African-American men were waiting for a friend at a Starbucks store in Philadelphia. One of them asked if he could use the bathroom and was refused because the two men had not yet bought anything. Later, the store manager asked them to leave if they would not be ordering anything from the store. When the two men insisted on staying, the manager called the police. The two men were arrested, marched out of the Starbucks in handcuffs, and held for hours before they were released without being charged. In response to the incident, both the CEO and the executive chairman apologized personally to the two men and offered to support their entrepreneurial pursuit. To prevent any further incidents of racial bias in its stores, Starbucks closed some 8,000 stores in the US for a whole afternoon in May, 2018 to conduct racial bias and discrimination training for 175,000 employees. To demonstrate its commitment to its fundamental principle of “Everyone is welcome”, and as a response to the incident, Starbucks adopted an open bathroom policy, which in itself brought new challenges for the leadership. Starbucks’ handling of the scandal serves as a textbook example on crisis management. The case study provides a great lesson for dealing with a crisis or PR disaster as a famous brand, and teaches how to turn a crisis into an opportunity.

On Thursday, April 12, 2018, two African-American men, Rashon Nelson and Donte Robinson, business partners and both 23-year-old, entered a Starbucks store in Philadelphia. As time went by, Nelson asked if he could use the rest room. The employee of the store turned him down as Nelson hadn’t purchased any drinks or food. A few minutes later, the two young men were approached by another employee at the table and asked if they would like to order anything. When they responded that they did not want to order anything at that moment, and that they were waiting to meet up with someone else, the two were asked to leave the shop. When the two men refused to leave, the store manager called the police. Shortly after, several police officers arrived and arrested the two men, marching them out of the Starbucks store in handcuffs. They were charged with trespassing and placed in a jail cell. The entire episode was recorded by other customers who then shared it on social media. 1 The incident went viral and created outrage at the treatment of the two young men, which led to calls for boycotts against Starbucks as well as protests in front of various locations of the popular chain. One group of protesters gathered in front of the Philadelphia shop shouting: “ A whole lot of racism, a whole lot of crap, Starbucks coffee is anti-black .” 2 The hashtag #BoycottStarbucks began to trend on Twitter too. 3

After several hours in custody, Robinson and Nelson were eventually released, but the incident left a lasting effect on the two men 4 as well as a storm of controversy for Starbucks.

Birth of “The Third Place”

The Starbucks company was founded by Jerry Baldwin, Gordon Bowker, and Zev Siegel. The three founders shared two common traits: they all came from academia, and they all loved coffee and tea. The “Starbucks” name was inspired by Herman Melville’s classic novel Moby Dick, evoking the romantic nostalgia of the seafaring tradition of early coffee traders ( Figure 1 ).

Figure 1: Starbucks Logo (with permission of Starbucks)

When the first store was opened in Seattle in 1971, Starbucks did not offer coffee beverages. The business model was based on selling high-quality coffee beans, imported teas, spices and roasting equipment. Due to the fresh-roasted coffees with Starbucks’ blends and flavours, the company stood out from the competitors. By the end of the 1970s, Starbucks grew to a wholesale company with four retail stores and a mail-order unit. Its annual sales reached $2 million. 5

In the early 1980s, Howard Schultz, who was then the director of sales of a company that sold European coffee makers in the United States, noticed that he was selling more and more coffee makers to a small operation in Seattle, known then as the Starbucks Coffee Tea and Spice Company. One day, he decided to walk into one of the Starbucks stores in Seattle to check out what this small operator was all about; a year later he joined the company himself. In 1983 while attending a trade show in Milan, Schultz was struck by the number of coffee bars along the streets. An idea then occurred to him: Starbucks should sell not just coffee beans but coffee beverages: “ I saw the same faces and the camaraderie. The coffee bar was an extension of people’s homes and was truly part of the fabric of the Italian culture. …This is something dynamic and unusual ,” Schultz recalled. “ And after a week in Italy, I was so convinced with such unbridled enthusiasm that I couldn’t wait to get back to Seattle to talk about the fact that I had seen the future .” 6

Schultz’s ambition was to open coffee bars in Starbucks stores, however, that goal was not shared by the company’s founders who wanted to stay in the quite profitable coffee bean business. Nevertheless, Schultz persisted until, finally, the owners let him establish a coffee bar in a new store that was opening in Seattle. The coffee bar was an instant success, bringing in hundreds of people every day and introducing a whole new subculture—the subculture of the coffeehouse—to Seattle in 1984.

Two years later, Schultz was able to convince investors that the value proposition derived by the customer was not the coffee per se, but rather the romance of the coffee experience; that Starbucks would be a place for conversation and bring forth a sense of community. The phrase with which he described his idea was “The Third Place”—the physical place in people’s lives between home and work. Supported by his local investors, Schultz purchased the company and became CEO and Chairman of Starbucks, known thereafter as the Starbucks Coffee Company. In a little more than three decades, Starbucks has become a worldwide brand that eclipses the competition, offering various coffee beverages to people in 30,000 stores across 80 markets (as of June 30, 2019).

In April 2017, Schultz transitioned into the role of executive chairman and Kevin Johnson was appointed CEO of Starbucks. Johnson, trained as an engineer and with a degree in business administration, spent 16 years at Microsoft. He was then CEO at another tech company before joining Starbucks as COO in 2014. Johnson has continued the success of the company while its mission remained constant: to inspire and nurture the human spirit—“one person, one cup and one neighbourhood at a time.” 7

The Secret to Success

How did Starbucks manage to live up to its “The Third Place” proposition and growing its customer base all over the world ( Exhibit 1 ) by offering its shops as a place where friends and family meet to enjoy quality service, an inviting atmosphere and exceptional beverages? “ The secret of Starbucks … is the culture and values and guiding principles of the company, the level of behaviour, and how people are treated. We’re not perfect, we make mistakes, you know we employ 400,000 people and have 30,000 stores but we’ve demonstrated over a 40-year period that culture really does matter .” Schultz described in an interview from March 2019. 8 Kevin Johnson, the successor to Schultz, further explained that at the heart of Starbucks’ culture are values which “ reflect the fundamental principle that everyone is welcome .” Johnson is also quoted saying that Starbucks “ aspire[s] to be a place of inclusion, diversity, equity, and accessibility. Diversity makes us stronger, and the creation of a deeply inclusive culture allows us to succeed and grow together .” 9 He added: This commitment to inclusiveness can be seen in the company’s support of eight diverse Partner Networks, whose activities and stories are shared on social network platforms online: 10

On the left of the image, the text, which is inside a circle, reads: Disability Advocacy Network. Below the circle, the text reads: “Starbucks Partners Access Alliance.” Below that text is a twitter handle @StarbucksAccessAlliance. Below the twitter handle is a list that reads: Home, About, Photos, Videos, and Posts.

On the right of the image is the tweet from Disability Advocacy Network, which reads: “Starbucks Partners – Access Alliance, May 20. Over the weekend in Guangzhou, China we opened our 3rd official signing store! “Store creates opportunities for the Deaf and hard of hearing community as part of the company’s ongoing commitment to inclusion, accessibility and diversity. Opening markets Starbucks third signing store globally”… See More”

Below that tweet is an image of the entrance of a newly opened Starbucks Store.

Figure 2: Starbucks opened its third global store at which staff is literate in sign language, Guangzhou, China, May 20, 2019

Source : Disability Advocacy Network on Facebook, 2019.

• 2. Disability Advocacy Network—created to foster a community of awareness, inclusion, and accessibility for partners with apparent and non-apparent disabilities. Figure 2 shows one of their recent posts.
• 3. Black Partner Network—for all Starbucks partners who want to cultivate, enhance and share the African and African-American experience.
• 4. China & Asia Pacific Network—for all Starbucks partners who want to nurture Asian culture and develop leaders through the lens of Starbucks China & Asia Pacific.
• 5. Hora del Café—for all Starbucks partners who want to develop professionally, build cultural awareness and celebrate Hispanic culture.
• 6. Pride Alliance Network—created to effect positive change and increase awareness of the LGBTQ community within Starbucks through an equitable, dynamic and supportive environment.
• 7. Women’s Impact Network—for all women who are Starbucks partners and want to focus on their professional and personal development.
• 8. India Partner Network—for all Starbucks partners who want to celebrate the Indian culture and support the growth of partners from India.

Certainly, Starbucks’ success is based on a number of factors, among which is the treatment of customers and of people who are members of the Starbucks organization. In order to put the concept of “developing enthusiastically satisfied customers all of the time” into practice, each of the employees, or baristas, must go through a training program upon joining the company. The training includes introduction to the company’s guiding principles as well as learning the techniques of brewing and serving Starbucks coffee.

The combination of cultural and technical training can be seen in the company’s Coffee Passport Program designed for new employees. 12 Since its inception, Starbucks has emphasized that it is a different kind of company: although its core business is coffee, its focus has always been the people who supply the coffee beans, who serve the coffee, and above all those who drink the coffee.

Like all companies, Starbucks had also faced challenges in the course of its development. The incident that happened at the Starbucks store in Philadelphia on April 12, 2018, was obviously not compatible with the standards and corporate culture advocated by Starbucks. Therefore, its top management immediately realized that action was necessary.

Racial Tensions in American Society

The United States has a long and unique history of contending with its African-American population. That history is marred by the legacies of slavery and Jim Crow/segregation where African-Americans were deemed second-class citizens. The Civil Rights movement put a stop to legal segregation in 1964, but problems with systemic racism in the society persist. A recent research revealed that in the United States, to this day, there are still obvious signs of racial inequality. African-Americans and other racial and ethnic minorities are often portrayed in negative and stereotyped roles in visual and textual media or video games. Compared with Whites, African-Americans struggle against biases and are therefore disadvantaged in many aspects such as job, housing and education opportunities. 13

Couple that history with new technologies such as camera phones and social media, incidents such as this can be captured on video and spread around the world within minutes, which can lead to combustible situations such as the one Starbucks faced here. In light of those circumstances, Starbucks is undergoing a damage test.

Responses to the Incident

Two days after the Philadelphia incident Starbucks publicly apologized by posting the message seen in Figure 3 on Twitter.

The tweet is dated 14. Apr. 2018 and reads: “We apologize to the two individuals and our customers for what took place at our Philadelphia store on Thursday.” Below that tweet is a notice that reads: “We apologize to the two individuals and our customers and are disappointed this led to an arrest. We take these matters seriously and clearly have more work to do when it comes to how we handle incidents in our stores. We are reviewing our policies and will continue to engage with the community and the police department to try to ensure these types of situations never happen in any of our stores.”

Figure 3: Public Apology from Starbucks

Source : Starbucks Coffee on Twitter, 2018.

Kevin Johnson, the CEO, called the arrests “reprehensible and wrong” 14 and characterized the incident as not corresponding to Starbucks’ mission. He also voiced his desire to change the way the company does business. The manager who called 911 15 and sparked the incident is no longer with Starbucks. Johnson also invited Robinson and Nelson for a personal meeting and apologized. He even offered to mentor the two gentlemen in their entrepreneurial pursuits. 16 Johnson then published a letter and a video message in which he stated: “ I’ve spent the last few days in Philadelphia with my leadership team listening to the community, learning what we did wrong and the steps we need to take to fix it .” 17 He also added: “ We’re ashamed and recognize that racial bias is a problem we must address … We’re taking a hard look at who we are as a company .”

Schultz, now executive chairman of Starbucks, who joined Johnson and other senior Starbucks executives in Philadelphia to meet with community leaders and Starbucks partners, said: “ The company’s founding values are based on humanity and inclusion. We will learn from our mistakes and reaffirm our commitment to creating a safe and welcoming environment for every customer .” 18

To prevent such incidents in the future, Johnson decided to close all of its stores (more than 8,000 company-owned stores) for half-a-day on May 29, 2018, at the company’s own expense to provide specialized training to 175,000 employees ( Figures 4 and 5 ). The training consisted of four-hour intensive workshops conducted by experts. The focus of the training was on racial bias, preventing discrimination, promoting conscious inclusion and methods of making sure every customer feels safe and welcome in their stores. External consultants and experts from institutions such as The Equal Justice Initiative, NAACP Legal Defence and Education Fund, Anti-Defamation League, among others, helped create the curriculum of the training sessions. Also involved were researchers, social scientists, and Starbucks’ own partners. Starbucks views this curriculum as setting the foundation for a long-term anti-bias, pro-diversity, pro-equity and pro-inclusion effort in all of its stores. Starbucks will share its training content with its licensed business partners, so that they will have the option of making it available to their employees at a later date too. 19

The responses of the employees as to the effectiveness of the training were mixed. Some believed that the training was an awakening to the issue, while others said that they were not sure how to apply that specific training in everyday situations. 20

The tweet is dated 29. Mai 2018 and it reads: “For several hours this afternoon, we will close stores and offices to discuss how to make Starbucks a place where all people feel welcome. Thank you for your patience and support as we renew our promise to make Starbucks an inclusive gathering place for all. See you tomorrow.”

Figure 4: Starbucks Coffee’s official announcement on May 29, 2018

The tweet reads: “Starbucks Coffee hat retweetet. The Leader Conference @civilrightsorg 29. Mai 2018. Racial bias training is an important first step, but there’s much more for companies to do to ensure all people feel welcome. We look forward to convening Starbucks and civil rights leaders this summer to discuss how they can better approach these issues.” Below that tweet is a photo of a notice that reads:

“We’re closing early on May 29. At Starbucks we are proud to be a third place—a place between home and work where everyone is welcome. A place where everyone feels that they belong. On May 29, our store will close at 2:30 pm so our team can reconnect with our mission and share ideas about how to make Starbucks even more welcoming. We look forward to seeing you when we reopen at Wednesday 5/30 @ 5:00 am.” Below the photo is a caption that reads: “Starbucks Closes More than 8,000 Stores today for racial bias training. The plan covers Starbucks-operated stores; nearly all of the 7,000. Starbucks-licensed coffee shops are likely to remain open. The post has 113 comments, 126 retweets, and 412 hearts.”

Figure 5: The leadership Conference – Starbucks

Source : The leadership Conference on Twitter, 2018.

Change in Bathroom Policy

Following the incident, Starbucks changed its bathroom policy to allow anyone to use them without the requirement of purchasing something in the coffee shop from now on. “ We don’t want to become a public bathroom, but we’re going to make the right decision 100% of the time and give people the key, because we don’t want anyone at Starbucks to feel as if we are not given access to you ,” said Howard Schultz. 21

However, the change in policy has not come without problems. Starbucks employees have reported incidents of loitering inside of the shops by homeless people as well as drug users. 22 But Starbucks remains committed to the policy and has even garnered praise for its response to the entire incident. 23 The company was able to avoid the worst of the possible consequences to what is a very explosive issue.

Starbucks admitted that the May 29 training effort wasn’t a solution, rather a first step. What other steps should Kevin Johnson take toward reconciling Starbucks’ values of openness and commitment to diversity with the reality of racial tensions in American society?

1. Pink Gal, “Black Guys Arrested in Starbucks,” YouTube, uploaded April 12, 2018, [ https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gegA9GsJ26A ], accessed August 2019.

2. “Starbucks CEO Calls Arrest of Black Men ‘Reprehensible’ as Protests Resume,” NBC Philadelphia News, April 17, 2018, [ https://www.nbcphiladelphia.com/news/local/Starbucks-CEO-Calls-Arrest-of-Black-Men-Reprehensible-as-Protests-Resume-479867443.html ], accessed August 2019.

3. What’s trending (@whatstrending), “Two Black Men Were Arrested at a @Starbucks in Philadelphia on April 12th While they were Waiting for a Friend to Arrive. The Hashtag #BoycottStarbucks Trended on Twitter in the days Following the Incident,” Twitter, April 16, 2018, 4:15 p.m., [ https://twitter.com/WhatsTrending/status/986020161437155329 ], accessed October, 2019.

4. “Black Men Arrested at Philadelphia Starbucks Feared for Their Lives,” The Guardian , April 19, 2019, [ https://www.theguardian.com/business/2018/apr/19/starbucks-black-men-feared-for-lives-philadelphia ], accessed October 2019.

5. Eric G, Flamholtz and Yvonne Randle, Corporate Culture: The Ultimate Strategic Asset (Stanford University Press, 2011), p. 76.

6. “Howard Schultz,” September 9, 2019, The Biography.com, [ https://www.biography.com/business-figure/howard-schultz ], accessed October, 2019.

7. Starbucks Coffee Company, “Starbucks Company Profile,” [ https://www.starbucks.com/about-us/company-information/starbucks-company-profileStarbucks.com ], accessed October, 2019.

8. Lucy Handley, “Howard Schultz on Building the Starbucks Brand: ‘I know a Little bit About Marketing,’” CNBC News , March 11, 2019, [ https://www.cnbc.com/2019/03/11/howard-schultz-on-the-starbucks-brand-i-know-a-little-about-marketing.html ], accessed October 2019.

9. Starbucks Coffee Company, “Diversity & Inclusion at Starbucks,” [ https://www.starbucks.com/responsibility/community/diversity-and-inclusion ], accessed October 2019.

10. Starbucks Coffee Company, “Inclusion at Starbucks,” [ https://www.starbucks.com/responsibility/community/diversity-and-inclusion/culture ], accessed October 2019.

11. Employees of Starbucks are called “partners”.

12. Eric G. Flamholtz and Yvonne Randle, Corporate Culture: The Ultimate Strategic Asset (Stanford University Press, 2011), pp. 79–80.

13. Vittrup Brigitte, “Color Blind or Color Conscious? White American Mothers’ Approaches to Racial Socialization,” Journal of Family Issues, Vol. 39(3) (2018): 66–692.

14. “Starbucks CEO Calls Arrest of Black men ‘Reprehensible’ as Protests Resume,” NBC Philadelphia News, April 17, 2018, [ https://www.nbcphiladelphia.com/news/local/Starbucks-CEO-Calls-Arrest-of-Black-Men-Reprehensible-as-Protests-Resume-479867443.html ], accessed August 2019.

15. It is the police number in the US.

16. Rachel Siegel, “Two Black Men Arrested at Starbucks Settle with Philadelphia for $1 Each,” The Washington Post , May 3, 2018, [ https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/business/wp/2018/05/02/african-american-men-arrested-at-starbucks-reach-1-settlement-with-the-city-secure-promise-for-200000-grant-program-for-young-entrepreneurs/ ], accessed October 2019.

17. Starbucks Coffee Company, “Starbucks to Close all Stores Nationwide for Racial-bias Education on May 29,” [ https://stories.starbucks.com/press/2018/starbucks-to-close-stores-nationwide-for-racial-bias-education-may-29/ ], accessed October 2019.

19. Starbucks Coffee Company, “A Preview of the May 29 Curriculum for 175,000 Starbucks Partners Across the Country,” [ https://stories.starbucks.com/stories/2018/starbucks-curriculum-preview-for-may-29/ ], accessed October 2019.

20. Julie Jargon and Rachel Feintzeig, “Starbucks Racial bias Training ‘Uncomfortable’ and ‘Enlightening’: Employees React,” The Wall Street Journal , June 1, 2018, [ https://www.wsj.com/articles/starbucks-racial-bias-training-uncomfortable-and-enlightening-employees-react-1527807677 ], accessed October 2019.

21. Zlati Meyer, “Starbucks Changes Bathroom Policy After Philadelphia Arrest: Anyone may use them,” USA Today , May 11, 2018, [ https://eu.usatoday.com/story/money/2018/05/11/philadelphia-starbucks-arrest-changes-bathroom-use-policy/601303002/ ], accessed October 2019.

22. Jordyn Holman and Jeff Green, “Starbucks Bathroom Birth Highlights Challenges of Welcoming all,” Los Angeles Times , January 26, 2019, [ https://www.latimes.com/business/la-fi-starbucks-homeless-20190126-story.html ], accessed October 2019.

23. Shep Hyken, “Starbucks gets an A in Crisis Management,” Forbes.com, May 10, 2018, [ https://www.forbes.com/sites/shephyken/2018/05/10/starbucks-gets-an-a-in-crisis-management/#3bd888037998 ], accessed October 2019.

This case was prepared for inclusion in SAGE Business Cases primarily as a basis for classroom discussion or self-study, and is not meant to illustrate either effective or ineffective management styles. Nothing herein shall be deemed to be an endorsement of any kind. This case is for scholarly, educational, or personal use only within your university, and cannot be forwarded outside the university or used for other commercial purposes.

2023 Sage Publications, Inc. All Rights Reserved

The case studies on SAGE Business Cases are designed and optimized for online learning. Please refer to the online version of this case to fully experience any video, data embeds, spreadsheets, slides, or other resources that may be included.

PDF 1. Mandarin Translation

Exhibit 1: Recent 5-Year Statistics of Starbucks

Source : Author based on Starbucks official website [ https://www.starbucks.com/about-us/company-information/starbucks-company-timeline ] and Statista [ https://www.statista.com/statistics/266465/number-of-starbucks-stores-worldwide/ ]

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Racism at Starbucks

Is implicit-bias training the answer.

Posted  May 29, 2018

Racism is still a problem in America, and it seemed to show itself again in the high-profile Starbucks story from Philadelphia.

On April 12, a white manager at Starbucks asked two black men to leave after they asked to use the restroom despite not having bought anything. When they refused to leave, the manager called the police, who ended up arresting the two men. The apparent charge was trespassing, but Starbucks ultimately did not press charges.

In the spirit of my slowing-down blog post, I tried not to jump to the conclusion of clear-cut racism. Initial reporting is notorious for sometimes leaving out relevant facts.

But as more information came out, it seemed to become more and more clear.

There was the viral smart-phone video of the whole event. The manager called the police within two minutes of the black men’s arrival. There was at least one white individual at a nearby table who had not bought anything but was not asked to leave.

The higher-up Starbucks management has apologized, made reference to skin color affecting perceptions, and planned an anti-bias training for their employees across the nation. The training is scheduled for May 29 and will focus on implicit bias.

Implicit bias refers to bias or prejudice that we’re not aware we hold against a group. But it can still affect how we act toward the group, like if a store manager sees trouble in black patrons’ behavior but not the same behavior in white patrons. Or perhaps like on April 30 when a woman in a white neighborhood called the police when three black people exited a home they had rented on Airbnb ( Victor, 2018 ).

More subtle is research that showed non-black participants were more likely to misidentify hand tools as guns when first shown a quick flash of a black face compared to a white face (Payne, 2001).

Though these may be cases of implicit racial bias, is implicit-bias training the best remedy?

It’s probably better than nothing, but not necessarily.

I am not the first author by far to raise such questions about the Starbucks response. Atlantic , NBC News , New York Times , Slate , Wall Street Journal , and even ThinkProgress have published pieces expressing doubt that implicit-bias training is enough or is even a good first step. And many of these authors cited research to justify their concern. Not that it isn’t a good sign that Starbucks is trying to address the problem.

One issue is the lack of research-based evidence that implicit-bias training reduces bias. In fact, some research suggests that the training can even increase bias depending on how it’s conducted (Lilienfeld, 2017). It turns out that telling people who are forced to attend that they’re secretly racist can sometimes backfire or contribute to backlash.

Carefully designing effective training that can overcome these risks takes time. And some experts have expressed doubt that Starbucks has enough time before May 29.

Even Anthony Greenwald, one of the creators of the famous Implicit Association Test (IAT), has conveyed concern. The IAT is often part of implicit-bias training, and Greenwald trusts the IAT to detect implicit bias. But he said that implicit-bias training “has not been shown to be effective, and it can even be counterproductive” ( Mak, 2018 ).

Based on some research, the IAT may not even be that accurate or reliable for all participants. Nor does it clearly do a great job at predicting racist behavior. A Harvard website that administers the IAT has a disclaimer section that basically says as much ( Stalder, 2016 ).

So what do we do?

I’m optimistic that the Starbucks training will at least make participants more aware of the existence of bias and the possibility of bias in themselves. And that may be an important first step.

To offset the potential resistance or backlash from some participants, I would recommend sharing the Harvard disclaimer or something like it. That might allow participants to more openly consider what’s being discussed without feeling personally accused.

We also need to slow down our judgments. Implicit bias is more likely to affect decisions when we make decisions quickly or under stress . Calling the police within two minutes might be too fast (not that I think restaurant managers have an easy job).

While waiting to judge, we can look for possible situational factors to explain seemingly suspicious behaviors, like maybe these two men were waiting to have a business meeting with someone (which they were).

The most promising suggestion that I found from some articles was that local managers be given less autonomy in making such quick judgment calls. It’s like creating a rubric or a set of rules when grading a paper, or when looking for someone to hire, and then sticking to those rules. A more structured and consistently applied evaluation process can reduce the inclination, unconscious or otherwise, to use a person’s skin color, gender , etc. to evaluate them.

Scott O. Lilienfeld, “Microaggressions: Strong Claims, Inadequate Evidence,” Perspectives on Psychological Science 12 (2017): 138–69.

Aaron Mak, “What Can Starbucks Accomplish?”, Slate , April 20, 2018, https://slate.com/technology/2018/04/does-implicit-bias-training-work-s… (accessed May 12, 2018).

B. K. Payne, “Prejudice and Perception: The Role of Automatic and Controlled Processes in Misperceiving a Weapon,” Journal of Personality and Social Psychology 81 (2001): 181–92.

Daniel R. Stalder, “Thinking We Can See Invisible Racism,” PARBs Anonymous (blog), August 18, 2016, https://parbsanonymous.wordpress.com/2016/08/18/thinking-we-can-see-inv… (accessed May 12, 2018).

Daniel Victor, “A Woman Said She Saw Burglars: They Were Just Black Airbnb Guests,” New York Times , May 8, 2018, https://www.nytimes.com/2018/05/08/us/airbnb-black-women-police.html (accessed May 12, 2018).

Daniel R. Stalder, Ph.D. , is a social psychologist at the University of Wisconsin-Whitewater and author of The Power of Context.

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Starbucks Ethical Issues

To inspire and nurture the human spirit - one person, one cup and one neighbourhood at a time."  - Starbucks' mission statementIn this case study we will examine Starbucks' business practices, some of which have been controversial. These include tax avoidance, allegations of irresponsible marketing, issues surrounding worker and human rights.     Before we discuss these ethical questions, let's summarise the…

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To inspire and nurture the human spirit - one person, one cup and one neighbourhood at a time."

- Starbucks' mission statement

In this case study we will examine Starbucks' business practices, some of which have been controversial. T hese include tax avoidance, allegations of irresponsible marketing , issues surrounding worker and human rights .

Before we discuss these ethical questions, let's summarise the history of the company.

Introduction to Starbucks

The first Starbucks was opened in Seattle in 1971 . The name was inspired by a character in the American novel Moby Dick. Starbuck was the first mate on the ship Pequod.

The company was owned by three US businessmen: Gordon Bowker, Zev Siegl, and Jerry Baldwin.

Starbucks combines the excitement of a rich coffee tradition with the feeling of connection among its customers. Its goal has always been to nourish the human spirit. In many cases, Starbucks is designed to be a home from home; a place people can go to recharge and spend time with friends and colleagues.

Today Starbucks is the world's largest coffee chain with over 33,833 stores in 80 countries. In the US, Starbucks owns 15,444 stores. Due to its monopoly, Starbucks control much of the coffee market. It plans to completely dominate the industry by eliminating competition.

Starbucks code of ethics

"Starbucks ethics & compliance supports our mission and values and helps protect our culture and our reputation by fostering a culture that is committed to ethical leadership and conducting business with integrity by providing resources that help partners make ethical decisions at work."

- starbucks.com

Corporate social responsibility (CSR) is a set of practices businesses undertake in order to contribute to society in a positive way.

Below is an overview of Starbucks' code of conduct (see Figure 1 below).

Coffee: Starbucks believes in the importance of sourcing the finest coffee beans and doing its part to improve the lives of its coffee farmers.

Partners: Starbucks believes that everyone is capable of being themselves, and that's why they aim to treat people with dignity and respect.

Customers: Starbucks' goal is to connect with customers and lift their spirits. It's about more than just making a great coffee!

Store : a sense of belonging is what makes Starbucks cafes special. It's a place where people can come to escape and just be with their friends.

Neighbourhood : e ach Starbucks store is part of a community. They take their responsibility to be a good neighbour seriously. They want to be part of the community in each locations.

Shareholders: Starbucks knows that its success is due to the things that they deliver in each of these key areas .

To learn more about CSR take a look at our explanation of Corporate Social Responsibility .

Starbucks ethics and compliance

Starbucks' Business Ethics and Compliance programme helps promote ethical behaviour at the company. It helps preserve its reputation and culture. Starbucks takes great pride in its efforts to promote ethical behaviour. Through the programme, the company receives regular reports detailing its efforts to conduct business in a way that is ethical and sustainable.

The job of the programme is to support the company's mission and values by helping employees make ethical decisions and to ensure that all employees are following the rules and regulations.

The company's mission is to create a culture that encourages and values its employees. Starbucks is committed to ensuring that its operations comply fully with the laws, regulations, and standards in the countries where it operates. To ensure that its operations are following the law, Starbucks regularly audits and reviews its policies and procedures. The company's Audit and Compliance Committee is responsible for overseeing the financial reporting and accounting processes. The company believes that managing an ethical organisation is a vital part of its success.

The Standard of Business Conduct is also used to communicate the expectations of the company's employees. It is consistent with Starbucks' core values.

Starbucks places emphasis on three key aspects for their employees:

Global human rights commitments, which are also incorporated into their business model.

Equal employment opportunity is a top priority.

Supporting healthcare reform and providing affordable coverage for their partners.

Criticism of Starbucks

Figure 2 summarises some of the criticism Starbucks has received.

Market strategy

Some of the market strategies Starbucks uses to maintain its dominant position in the market have been called anti-competitive by critics.

Starbucks used its financial strength to acquire prime locations by buying out the leases of its competitors.

Critics argue that this is unfair because competitors are not able to afford the higher price for prime locations.

Employee disputes

In 2005, Starbucks settled an employment lawsuit with eight workers at its Kent, Washington, roasting plant. The employees said they were retaliated against for supporting the union.

In November 2005, about 2,000 Starbucks workers in New Zealand went on strike. The group wanted the company to improve its youth rates and provide secure hours.

In 2008, a California court ordered Starbucks to pay over $100 million back in tips to baristas. T he company had illegally distributed tips from the tip pool for baristas to its shift supervisors. Jou Chau, a barista, brought a lawsuit against Starbucks in 2003-2004 for this practice, saying that Starbucks should pay supervisors higher salaries rather than taking money from the tip pool. Tips should be for those who work on the minimum wage.

In October 2006, the British NGO, Oxfam, accused Starbucks of harming coffee farmers in Ethiopia by not honouring its fair trade agreements. According to Oxfam, Starbucks was harming the country's coffee farmers by not allowing them to register their products with the Ethiopian government. Starbucks responded by stating that Oxfam's claims were misleading.

An analysis conducted by supply-chain risk management firm SFK Inc. revealed that:

the demand for Starbucks' coffee exceeded supply,

Starbucks did not purchase fair trade coffee when it was available,

Starbucks charged higher than market value prices for Ethiopian coffee.

The firm also criticised the Fairtrade movement saying that it tends to make matters worse instead of better. SFK also suggested that the coffee farmers directly sell their products to Starbucks. The company would then establish a local subsidiary that would manage the relationship between the farmers and Starbucks.

In 2007, Starbucks and the Ethiopian government signed an agreement that recognised the importance of the country's speciality coffee types. The partnership allowed the farmers to earn more from the company's coffee brands.

Tax avoidance

Tax avoidance is when businesses try to find legal loopholes to reduce the amount of taxes they pay. Tax evasion is when a business/person simply doesn’t pay taxes or doesn’t pay the correct amount on purpose.

One primary mechanism used by many US companies to reduce their tax burden is by housing intellectual property units in tax havens , and then charging their subsidiaries royalties for using them.

Intellectual property is an intangible asset legally owned and protected by a business or individual. Other people can't use these assets without the owner's content.

Tax havens are countries or regions that allow foreign individuals and businesses to pay a lower tax rate than they should.

Here's an example of how Starbucks avoids UK taxes:

Income tax is charged on a company's profit. To reduce the amount paid in tax, the company needs to lower its profits. This can be achieved by either cutting down on the revenue or increasing the costs ( Profit = Revenue - Costs) . It's unlikely any company will shrink its revenue, so the only alternative is to bring up the costs.

One of the methods employed by Starbucks to increase costs (and thus reduce income tax) is to charge a royalty fee for branches abroad that make use of its intellectual property such as brand image, logo, or processes.

In the UK and other European countries, the royalty fee is around 6% of total sales. Since these royalty payments are counted as costs, Starbucks UK Headquarters can deduct them from the profit, which reduces the amount of income tax paid .

As for the US, the royalty earnings from abroad are taxable by law. However, it's not clear if these fees were ever sent back to the United States to be taxed. Starbucks might have kept them in one of its branches in tax havens such as Switzerlandd, where the royalty earning tax rate for foreign businesses is rather low at 2%. In the US, the corporate tax is as high as 39%.

While there is no clear dividing line, probably most people would think these methods are unethical.

There are 3 fundamental reasons for this.

Firstly, the purpose of tax is to allow governments to provide services for the population. By avoiding tax, companies are depriving communities of funding. C ompanies adopting tax avoidance practices, albeit legally, might be seen as socially irresponsible. The practice appears to be at odds with the Starbucks' policy of being a good neighbour.

The second reason is the lack of a level playing field. Locally owned businesses cannot use the same methods, giving an unfair advantage to large international corporations.

The third factor is the lack of transparency. Starbucks rarely, if ever, declares a taxable profit to the UK tax authorities. For example, in 2012, the company reported no profit in the UK and thus paid no income tax despite making a lucrative income of £1.2 billion.

In conclusion, given the aggressive tax stance, aggressive marketing strategy, some poor working conditions, and a weak position on fair trade, many would conclude that Starbucks falls short when it comes to ethical practices.

Starbucks Ethical Issues - Key takeaways

The original Starbucks was opened in 1971 in Seattle.

Starbucks combines the excitement of a rich coffee tradition with the feeling of connection among its customers. Its goal has always been to nourish the human spirit.

Starbucks is the world's largest coffee retailer with over 20,000 stores in 65 countries.

Starbucks Business Ethics and Compliance programmes help promote ethical behaviour at the company. It helps preserve its reputation and culture.

Starbucks emphasises three areas:

1. A commitment to global human rights commitments, which is built into their business model.

2. Equal employment opportunities, a top priority for the company.

3. Supporting healthcare reform and providing affordable coverage for partners of employees.

With an aggressive tax stance, an aggressive marketing strategy, some poor employee conditions, and a weak position on fair trade, many would conclude Starbucks did fall short when it comes to ethical practices.

1. "Starbucks stores: U.S. and international", Statista , 2021.

2. "Ethics & Compliance", Starbucks , 2022.

3. Anna Canning, "Starbucks has a Slave Labor Problem", Fair World Project , 2019.

4. "Starbucks Tips Baristas $100 Million", Forbes , 2008.

5. Tsegaye Tadesse, "Oxfam says Starbucks blocks Ethiopian coffee", Reuters , 2007.

6. Tom Bergin, "SPECIAL REPORT - How Starbucks avoids UK taxes", Reuters , 2012.

Frequently Asked Questions about Starbucks Ethical Issues

--> what does starbucks do to be ethical.

Starbucks introduced Business Ethics and Compliance programs to promote ethical behaviour at the company and among its partners. 

--> Is Starbucks an ethical company?

Starbucks is an ethical company which focuses on three main areas: global human rights, equal employment opportunities, and healthcare coverage for employees. 

--> What are the problems of Starbucks?

Starbucks receives criticism for its aggressive marketing strategy, employee disputes, a weak position on fair trade, and some tax avoidance. 

--> Why is Starbucks declining?

Starbucks might be declining due to the problems its faces regarding ethical practices as well as fierce competition within the coffee industry. 

--> How are Starbucks employees treated?

Starbucks employees are provided with a positive working environment, equal employment opportunities and healthcare coverage. 

Final Starbucks Ethical Issues Quiz

Starbucks ethical issues quiz - teste dein wissen.

What does Starbucks do to be ethical? 

Show answer

As a long-standing member of the sustainable community, Starbucks has a commitment to reduce waste and become an eco-friendlier company. They are constantly looking for ways to improve the efficiency of their operations and minimize waste in their stores. 

Show question

Is Starbucks an ethical company? 

Many would conclude that Starbucks fall short when it comes to ethical practices.

What year did the original Starbucks was opened? 

Starbucks's named was inspired by the classic tale of? 

Starbucks was originally owned by three US businessmen, who were they? 

Gordon Bowker, Zev Siegl, and Jerry Baldwin

True or False? 

Starbucks combines the excitement of a rich coffee tradition with the feeling of connection among its customers. 

Its goal has always been to nourish the human spirit. In many cases, Starbucks is the third home away from home. 

Starbucks has emphasis on three sectors of their employees. What are they? 

1 - Global human rights commitments, which are also incorporated in their business model.  

2 - Equal employment opportunity, which is also a top priority for the company.  

3 - Supporting healthcare reform and provide affordable coverage for their partners. 

Some of the market strategies Starbucks used to maintain its dominant position in the market were labeled as anti-competitive by critics. For instance, it bought out some of the competing companies' leases and then used its financial strength to acquire prime locations. 

In October 2006, the British NGO, Oxfam accused Starbucks of helping g the coffee farmers in Ethiopia and honouring its Fairtrade agreements. 

Starbucks rarely, if ever declares a taxable profit to the UK tax authorities.   

What ethical issues does Starbucks have? 

• unfair labour treatment
• anti-competitive marketing strategy and tax avoidance
• failure to honour its Fairtrade agreements with farmers. 

What does Starbucks Business Ethics and Compliance program do? 

Starbucks Business Ethics and Compliance programs help promote ethical behaviour at the company as well as preserve their reputation and culture. 

What is tax avoidance? 

Tax avoidance is the practice of taking advantage of certain legal methods to reduce the amount of tax paid by an individual or an organization. 

How does Starbucks avoid taxes? 

By increasing costs through charging foreign franchisees a royalty fee, Starbucks reduces its profits and thus the income tax it has to pay. 

What is intellectual property? 

Intellectual property is an intangible asset legally owned and protected by a business or individual. e.g. brand image, logo, processes, etc. 

What are tax havens? 

Tax havens are countries or regions that allow foreign individuals and businesses to pay a lower tax rate than they should. 

What elements are included in Starbucks' code of conduct? 

• Neighborhood
• Shareholders

When was the first Starbucks opened?

The first Starbucks was opened in...

Today Starbucks is the world's largest coffee chain.

What does CSR stand for?

___ is a set of practices businesses undertake in order to contribute to society in a positive way.

Corporate social responsibility

___ is when businesses try to find legal loopholes to reduce the amount of taxes they pay. 

It is when a business/person simply doesn’t pay taxes or doesn’t pay the correct amount on purpose. What is it?

Tax evasion

___ are countries or regions that allow foreign individuals and businesses to pay a lower tax rate than they should. 

Tax heavens

___ is an intangible asset legally owned and protected by a business or individual. Other people can't use these assets without the owner's content. 

Intellectual property

Income tax is charged on a company's profit. To reduce the amount paid in tax, the company needs to lower its...

Brand image, logo, or processes are examples of...

intellectual property.

___ is charged on a company's profit. To reduce the amount paid in tax, the company needs to lower its profits. 

Income tax 

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Creating a winning brand strategy: The Starbucks Case Study Rise and Grind

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In this episode of Rise and Grind, we dive deep into the world of brand strategy, discussing the importance and steps of creating a successful brand. Using the global giant Starbucks as a real-life case study, we'll explore how the company has successfully executed a brand strategy that has set them apart, built customer loyalty and increased brand awareness. From conducting market research to developing a brand positioning statement, we'll take you through the key steps of creating a winning brand strategy that can set your business apart and drive growth. Tune in to learn how to take your brand to the next level and rise above the competition.

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