By Deirdre Reilly | Sunday, July 29, 2018
Corporate virtue-signaling may garner lots of media attention and feel really good to liberals to engage in it, but it can also impact a company’s financials.
Case in point: Back in May, a Starbucks manager in a Philadelphia store called the police on two black men after they would not leave the store without making a purchase — which was against then-company policy.
As a result of that incident and the attention it received, Starbucks subsequently made much ado of its planned day of “anti-bias training’ later that month , requiring the temporary closure of about 8,000 locations.
Even that day of “kumbaya” wasn’t enough for the coffee corporation, though. Former Starbucks CEO Howard Schultz — who has since stepped down — also contacted Heather McGhee of the equality advocacy group Demos and Sherrilyn Ifill of the NAACP legal defense and education fund for inspiration on more ways the coffee chain could serve up progressive values with some over-priced java.
McGhee and Ifill had several recommendations, including “a top-to-bottom civil rights audit, more resources for employees who encounter customers with mental-health and addiction problems, and the creation of a ‘customer bill of rights’ to be posted at each store,” the Seattle Times reported.
It’s a wonder there’s enough time to actually brew coffee and sell it.
There are now numbers available for the past fiscal quarter: Starbucks said shutting down its stores for a day lowered comparable-store sales by less than half a percent, the Associated Press reported .
Total revenue for the quarter was slightly below estimates, with the company earning $6.23 billion compared to the expected $6.25 billion. The company said it expects its full-year sales growth to be “just below” its previous target of 3 to 5 percent.
“I don’t go to Starbucks. They ‘re more interested in social justice than customer satisfaction and even safety, letting everyone use their bathrooms.”
For the quarter, the company reported last Thursday a net income of $852.5 million; after adjusting for non-recurring costs, earnings came to 62 cents per share. The total quarter results did top Wall Street expectations, noted the Associated Press, with total sales increasing by 11.5 percent to $6.31 billion, compared to $5.66 billion during the same quarter last year, CNBC reported.
Starbucks says sales grew only one percent at established U.S. locations — lower than expectations. It “has also blamed health concerns for slipping Frappuccino sales, though industry analysts have said that increased competition is the reason for the slippage,” as the AP noted .
The number of sales declined but the amount spent during each visit rose, the AP also reported, ostensibly because supporters of the brand spent more inside the locations. Yet the number of visits decreased.
“I was going to a meeting and the person I was meeting suggested Starbucks as a location to get together and talk,” one Murfreesboro, Tennessee, construction manager told LifeZette. “I said, ‘It’s Dunkin’ Donuts or nothing.’ I don’t go to Starbucks. They ‘re more interested in social justice than customer satisfaction and even safety, letting everyone use their bathrooms.”
He added, “Multiply me by 10,000 other people, and you begin to see a possible problem for the brand.”
S E E D E D C O N T E N T
Article is LOCKED by author/seeder
Howard Schultz didn't care about the Company, he was more interested in advancing his own ideology.
A friend of mine attended a seminar where Schultz was a key speaker. He managed to get him alone for a moment and asked what was the one thing that made him successful. Schultz told him it was selling overpriced coffee in pretty cups.
Lol...It is kind of like the Wine producers who discovered that when they raised their prices, sales actually increased. Here in MA you usually see Starbucks in affluent neighborhoods while Dunkin Donuts is everywhere. DD is superior yet cheaper, so I guess Starbucks is nothing more than a status symbol.
I think that is Starbucks whole thing
Did you see where Starbucks is now making paperstraws instead of single use plastic straws? Yeah, they are wrapping them in single use plastic wrapping. Simply brilliant, I tell you.
Oh, common that is liberal logic at it's finest. They solved one problem by creating a different one. Same amount of trash being made; but they accomplished their goal of no plastic straws.
I never understood the fascination with straws when plastic water bottles are a much bigger waste stream problem.
You have to understand that MOST conservatives live by the mantra, "if it doesn't destroy the environment, we won't use it". These people are waiting for the garbage patch in the Pacific to become big enough to populate..
i'd rather go to Panera. Far less loony libs there.
Starbucks is horrific coffee because they overroast the beans. Caribou coffee is almost as bad.
There was an NE-Ohio chain called Arabica that was the best but I think they went belly up in the 2008 recession.
I would rather go to Starbucks than Panera, far less cunty cons there.
Don't drink coffee, went there once for hot chocolate, didn't care for it, never went back again.
Most people in my neck of the woods go to Timmy Ho's.
I went there once while my car was being serviced to get a cup of tea. They had like 10 kinds of tea but not a damned lemon in sight, not even the little packets of lemon juice. They have all this crap to put in and on coffee, but no lemon for the tea drinkers.
The title of the article is not supported by the body. The body of the article shows Starbucks’ revenue for the quarter 11.5% higher than that quarter in the previous year. However, the article is peppered with nonsense snippets from conservatives as to how Starbucks are SJWs and making bathrooms unsafe,… So, the purpose of the article is to tell a lie about Starbucks so that conservatives can pant and clutch their pearls because of some non-existent slight.
Started a trip with a friend with coffee stop at Sheetz, he said when we get down the road he is going to buy me a really good coffee. He didn't like it that I told him Starbucks was a let down.