CEO: Starbucks May End Its Open Restrooms Policy

The New York Times reports:

Starbucks’s chief executive, Howard Schultz, says the company is considering ending its open bathroom policy. Speaking on Thursday at The Times’s DealBook D.C. policy forum, Mr. Schultz said the coffee giant might no longer allow people who were not customers to use their stores’ bathrooms.

The move would reverse a policy Starbucks instituted in 2018 in the wake of the arrest of two Black men in one of its Philadelphia stores. The two men had been reported to the police by a Starbucks employee after they were denied use of the store’s bathroom and asked to leave. They hadn’t made a purchase.

But on Thursday Mr. Schultz said that a growing mental health problem was making it difficult for his company’s employees to manage its stores under the current policies. Mr. Schultz said that the decision was an “issue of just safety.”

Read the full article.

Starbucks’s chief executive, Howard Schultz, says the company is considering ending its open bathroom policy. https://t.co/WMeDcEW4ue

— The New York Times (@nytimes) June 10, 2022