Some Starbucks store employees say the coffee chain’s new bathroom and free water policies might not be enforceable.
Store managers have been explaining new guidelines, which are part of its “Coffeehouse Code of Conduct,” to staff in three-hour long meetings this week.
One of the biggest changes: Starbucks visitors will need to buy something in order to get a cup of water or use the bathroom. That reverses Starbucks’ previous open-door policy, which the chain implemented in 2018. Starbucks enacted it after a Black man who had not bought anything asked to use the restroom and was subsequently arrested at a store in Philadelphia.
One store manager told Business Insider that the new policy could make it easier to tell people who are being disruptive or potentially dangerous to leave the store.
“We’re really being given more of an ability to protect the partners, especially in high-incident stores,” the manager said. (Starbucks refers to its store employees as “partners.”)
Making such “high-incident stores” lower-incident seems to fit with new CEO Brian Niccol’s goal of making them places where people want to hang out. The company has been struggling with declining sales in the US and globally, and Niccol has been keen for the coffee shops to become spaces where customers linger longer.
However, other Starbucks store employees told BI that they foresee problems enforcing the new policy when it takes effect on Monday.
One partner at a store in Florida said that she and other employees there will likely keep giving out water, even if the visitor hasn’t purchased anything, just to avoid confrontation.
“They’re just going to walk over, scoop up a water, and give it to the person to get them the hell out of there and not argue,” the partner said. “That’s really what’s going to happen.”
“We’re training our partners to ensure that everyone who visits our store has a great experience,” Starbucks spokesperson Jaci Anderson told BI. “This starts with boosting our baristas’ confidence by encouraging them to warmly acknowledge and engage with every person in our store, treating them with kindness, respect, and assuming positive intent.”
During her store’s three-hour-long meeting, the Florida partner told BI, her manager said partners should remind customers about the new policy if they ask for water or want to use the bathroom without a purchase. The manager provided de-escalation tactics in case the conversation got heated.
But the manager also said partners shouldn’t follow patrons out of the store if they break that policy, she said. That advice is reminiscent of Starbucks’ policy on dealing with shoplifters, which forbids partners from taking direct action to stop theft, the partner said.
“If you see someone and you know that they just put a bag of coffee down their shirt, it is against policy to confront them,” the partner added. Starbucks confirmed that it trains partners to de-escalate and disengage if a person’s behavior puts the safety of others in jeopardy.
Other retailers, including Walmart, have similar rules that prohibit store employees from taking action against potential thieves.
Another Starbucks partner at a store in the South agrees with the decision to reserve free water and bathroom access for paying customers. “I don’t think it’s right for people to use our bathrooms, which we have to clean and maintain, unless you’re a paying customer,” the partner said.
But he added that the bathrooms at his store don’t have locks to access them, allowing anyone to use them. Instead, the partner said, his store will get signs for the bathrooms that say “Customers Only.”
“The way my manager explained it is that it gives us the support to ask people to leave that are disruptive, but we’re not going to be the bathroom police,” he said of the new policy.
CEO Niccol has said that he wants to make Starbucks stores “inviting places to linger, with comfortable seating, thoughtful design and a clear distinction between ‘to-go’ and ‘for-here’ service,” he wrote in an open letter published after he started at the company in September.
Declining to hand out water and provide bathroom access appears to be at odds with Niccol’s goal of making the stores places where people want to spend time, the partner in Florida said.
“We’re supposed to be the third place where people come and hang out,” the partner said. “That’s where they’ve contradicted themselves.”
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