This summer, Starbucks announced it would be closing 16 stores due to safety concerns.1 "We've had to make the difficult decision to close some locations that have a particularly high volume of challenging incidents that make it unsafe for us to operate," a spokesman told reporters.2 Signaling that the July 2022 closures were "just the beginning," CEO Howard Schultz has forecast that ''there are going to be many more. "3
Indeed, store managers have complained of assaults, theft, and drug use in stores, while employees have recounted horror stories from store bathrooms, such as having to regularly clean up blood and needles, and seeing individuals overdose and need to be revived with Narcan.4 In no other multi-billion-dollar company would such scenes be acceptable, yet in many Starbucks locations across the country, it has become the norm.
The Board must stop and ask itself, "How did this happen?"
Starbucks leadership has embraced woke business practices and company policies that fail to protect its staff and its patrons.5 In response to an alleged racially discriminatory incident involving Starbucks employees at one of its Philadelphia stores in 2018, Starbucks closed all of its stores nationwide for "racial-bias education."6 This training was led by left-leaning organizations and individuals, including the former head of the Justice Department under President Obama.7
But Starbucks didn't stop there. It subsequently instituted sweeping policy changes by introducing a "third place policy" that invited non-customers to enjoy using Starbucks facilities, including its bathrooms, despite not making a single purchase.8 In doing so, Starbucks invited the exact behavior that it now laments as the cause of its store closures. Worse yet, the company flat out ignored an independent academic study that found that Starbucks' open bathroom policy was hurting its bottom-line.9
Changing company policy to now permit individual stores to make their own decisions as to whether to have an open bathroom policy is an important first step in addressing the decisions that led to the safety concerns experienced in the first place, but it is just that, a first step.10 Reflecting upon the company's policy positions and advocacy decisions-and assessing how they have contributed to its need to close stores due to safety issues - is therefore necessary to keep additional stores from closing and to protect shareholders.