If you want to hang out or use the restroom at Starbucks, you’re going to have to buy something.
Starbucks on Monday said it was reversing a policy that invited everyone into its stores. A new code of conduct – which will be posted in all company-owned North American stores – also bans discrimination or harassment, consumption of outside alcohol, smoking, vaping, drug use and panhandling.
Starbucks spokesperson Jaci Anderson said the new rules are designed to help prioritize paying customers. Anderson said most other retailers already have similar rules.
Targeting the growing homeless population. Don’t let it confuse you for anything else.
Why would it possibly be on Starbucks to provide places for homeless people to hang out for hours. This should be a public function.
Yeah! Why should a business within a community do things that help support that community!
I know you’re just circlejerking here so discussion is probably pointless, but there are many ways to serve the community and providing a quiet, nicely ambient place (aspirational goals, only met sometimes in reality) to sit or work for a few hours, for the price of a $3 coffee is one. I live in New York and for just over the price of a subway ride I can get wifi, a desk to work, outlets and a decently comfortable chair, and a restroom, and I can hang out there a while.
Serving the homeless in public places is notoriously difficult to get right, as most state and local governments experience demonstrates. Why we’d expect a cafe company to do a good job as well as meet its other goals is confusing.
