The coffee giant’s CEO is encouraging the company’s 191,000 employees to talk about race relations with customers through an initiative called “Race Together.”
Starbucks CEO Howard Schultz is encouraging baristas to discuss race relations with customers.
Starbucks
The company has held meetings over the past three months with workers about race, according to a statement from Starbucks.
The first open forum was improtu and held for staffers in Seattle, where the company is headquartered, in response to police killings of unarmed black men in Ferguson, Missouri, and New York.
The open forums on race then took place in cities across the U.S., including Oakland, Los Angeles, St. Louis, New York, and Chicago.
The CEO, who oversees 12,000 U.S. stores, now wants those conversations about race to continue and involve Starbucks customers too.
Starbucks
"To be honest there were people that said, this is not a subject you should touch. This is not for you, this is not for a company, this is for someone else," Schultz said in a video message to employees. "I reject that. I reject that completely because we can't leave this to someone else."
According to Fortune, 40% of Starbucks employees are members of a racial minority.
via FOLLOW
