Starbucks baristas no longer must stop to discuss race with strangers

Starbucks CEO Howard Schultz sent employees a note today ending the company's call on baristas to write “Race Together” on customers’ coffee cups and engage them in discussions of racial issues. They can go back to just making so-co coffee while customers fume in slow-moving lines.

From the New York Times story:

“While there has been criticism of the initiative — and I know this hasn’t been easy for any of you — let me assure you that we didn’t expect universal praise,” Mr. Schultz wrote.

Having baristas write on customers’ cups, Mr. Schultz wrote, “which was always just the catalyst for a much broader and longer-term conversation — will be completed as originally planned today, March 22.”

That end date had not previously been mentioned publicly, including during Mr. Schultz’s discussion of the initiative at the company’s annual shareholders meeting last week, but a company spokeswoman, Laurel Harper, said employees had been told about it.

Asked whether Starbucks was reacting to criticism, Ms. Harper said, “That is not true at all. When we initially began the Race Together initiative, what we wanted to do is spark the conversation, because we believe that is the first step in a complicated issue.”

If race is a specially complicated issue inside the four walls of Starbucks' everywhere, then having baristas slow down the latte manufacturing process to somehow fix it doesn't sound like a very meaningful first step. If what they mean is the complicated issue of race in society beyond Starbucks, the idea that these people think we're at the "first step" stage says more than Schultz intended.