Starbucks chairman opens up about company’s race failures — and says its bathrooms are now open to allWashington Post, May 10, 2018, Tracy Jan
Starbucks Chairman Howard Schultz said Thursday that the company will now open its bathrooms to everyone, regardless of whether a purchase has been made, following the arrest of two African American men who had asked to use the bathroom at one of its downtown Philadelphia coffee shops.
Schultz, speaking at the Atlantic Council in Washington hours before he was slated to receive a business leadership award, said the company is changing its policy, after weeks of controversy, because it wants everyone — customer or not — to feel welcome at Starbucks.
“We don’t want to become a public bathroom, but we’re going to make the right decision a hundred percent of the time and give people the key,†Schultz said, “because we don’t want anyone at Starbucks to feel as if we are not giving access to you to the bathroom because you are less than.â€
He said that Starbucks previously had a “loose policy†that only customers should be allowed to use the bathrooms but that it was up to each store manager’s discretion.
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The coffee chain is slated to close more than 8,000 U.S. stores on the afternoon of May 29 for racial bias training, which Schultz characterized Thursday as the “largest training of its kind†on “one of the most systemic subjects and issues facing our country.â€
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