Large Coffee No Race

Starbucks Race Together campaign has come to an end after one long week of less than enthusiastic support from their customers.

No doubt the founder of Starbucks, Howard Schultz, had the best intentions with the campaign. He was advised by some in his company that it was a bad idea, he went forward anyway. He should absolutely encourage conversations about race and use his public soap box as a major corporate C.E.O.

The failure of the idea is really quite simple and it has nothing to do with race. Schultz envisions Starbucks as some kind of community center, it most certainly is not. It is a huge corporation with thousands of locations which had an expansion blueprint in the beginning that was about coming to a community saturating it with multiple locations and crushing the independent coffee shops. Not that all of those independents were worth saving, but that legacy is remembered.

Starbucks is a busy place with most customers zooming in and out, that's why many of their locations now have drive through windows. As for those who fill the seats, they are talking to the friend(s) they came with or buried in their phones and laptops. I have never had a conversation with a fellow Bucker. Not that I go a lot, but it's just not the seat of intellectualism that Schultz thinks.

You sell coffee, wake up and smell it. I have a suggestion for your next campaign, have the baristas write economic disparity on the cup. After the customer plops down the six bucks for his mocha choca latte with double caramel drizzle, the barista can say, "ironic story, I can't afford that drink on my wages."