Starbucks wants its baristas to join the conversation about race relations in America.
A new campaign called Race Together that launched at all company stores this week is intended to encourage discussions about race between Starbucks employees and customers.
Baristas are encouraged, but not required, to write the words Race Together on cups to engage customers in conversation about the issues, according to a statement from Starbucks. If customers don’t want a Race Together cup, they can ask for a plain cup.
The initiative stemmed from a forum in December at company headquarters in Seattle, where employees were encouraged to discuss their thoughts on racial tension in the United States after police killings of unarmed black men in Ferguson, Mo., and New York.
“If we just keep going about our business and ringing the Starbucks register every day and ignoring this, then I think we are, in a sense, part of the problem,” Starbucks Chief Executive Howard Schultz told employees at the videotaped December meeting.
“I don’t feel, candidly, that staying quiet as a company and staying quiet in this building is who we are and who I want us to be,” he said. “We’re going to find a way to thread our values and our sense of humanity into the national conversation, and perhaps we can have some effect on the national discourse.”
The Seattle forum was followed by others in Oakland, Calif., Los Angeles, St. Louis, New York and Chicago – discussions that were attended by more than 2,000 employees, according to the company.
“Given their willingness to discuss race relations, many partners wanted to begin conversations with their customers too,” the company said in a statement.
The campaign has drawn criticism on Twitter, with users commenting on the company’s hiring practices, the lack of diversity in the Starbucks Race Together publicity photos and incorrect name spellings on cups.
Shares of Starbucks were up 17 cents, or 0.18 percent, to $94.19 in midday trading.
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