{"id":1512949,"date":"2022-06-13T07:19:30","date_gmt":"2022-06-13T11:19:30","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/?p=1512949"},"modified":"2022-06-13T07:19:33","modified_gmt":"2022-06-13T11:19:33","slug":"starbucks-may-end-open-to-all-bathroom-policy-citing-safety-concerns","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/starbucks-may-end-open-to-all-bathroom-policy-citing-safety-concerns\/","title":{"rendered":"Starbucks May End Open-to-All Bathroom Policy, Citing Safety Concerns"},"content":{"rendered":"<aside class=\"mashsb-container mashsb-main mashsb-stretched\"><div class=\"mashsb-box\"><div class=\"mashsb-count mash-medium\" style=\"float:left\"><div class=\"counts mashsbcount\">18<\/div><span class=\"mashsb-sharetext\">SHARES<\/span><\/div><div class=\"mashsb-buttons\"><a class=\"mashicon-facebook mash-medium mash-nomargin mashsb-noshadow\" href=\"https:\/\/www.facebook.com\/sharer.php?u=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.conservativenewsdaily.net%2Fbreaking-news%2Fstarbucks-may-end-open-to-all-bathroom-policy-citing-safety-concerns%2F\" target=\"_top\" rel=\"nofollow\"><span class=\"icon\"><\/span><span class=\"text\">Facebook<\/span><\/a><a class=\"mashicon-twitter mash-medium mash-nomargin mashsb-noshadow\" href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/intent\/tweet?text=&amp;url=https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/?p=1512949&amp;via=ConservNewsDly\" target=\"_top\" rel=\"nofollow\"><span class=\"icon\"><\/span><span class=\"text\">Twitter<\/span><\/a><a class=\"mashicon-subscribe mash-medium mash-nomargin mashsb-noshadow\" href=\"#\" target=\"_top\" rel=\"nofollow\"><span class=\"icon\"><\/span><span class=\"text\">Subscribe<\/span><\/a><div class=\"onoffswitch2 mash-medium mashsb-noshadow\" style=\"display:none\"><\/div><\/div>\n            <\/div>\n                <div style=\"clear:both\"><\/div><\/aside>\n            <!-- Share buttons by mashshare.net - Version: 4.0.47--><p><a href=\"https:\/\/www.theepochtimes.com\/t-starbucks\">Starbucks<\/a> is reconsidering its open-to-all bathroom policy because worsening <a href=\"https:\/\/www.theepochtimes.com\/t-mental-health\">mental health<\/a> problems among the public are posing a threat to employees and customers.<\/p>\n<p>Howard Schultz, the CEO of the coffee shop chain, indicated during a New York Times DealBook forum on Thursday that the company may once again reserve the bathrooms for paying customers.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cWe serve 100 million people at Starbucks,\u201d Schultz said in <a href=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/watch?v=FUxpuhci9qI&#038;t=1230s\">a conversation<\/a> about mental health, which he described as the \u201cNo.1 issue\u201d his company is dealing with. \u201cThere is an issue of just safety in our stores in terms of people coming in who use our stores as a public bathroom, and we have to provide a safe environment for our people and our customers.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cThe mental health crisis in this country is severe, acute, and getting worse,\u201d he told the NY Times, adding that Starbucks is providing better training and \u201chardening our stores\u201d in response to the mental health challenges.<\/p>\n<p>When asked exactly what \u201chardening the stores\u201d means, Schultz replied that this could mean the end of free bathroom access for non-customers.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cI don\u2019t know if we can keep our bathrooms open,\u201d he said, before arguing that the government should address mental health instead of leaving the problem to individual businesses.<\/p>\n<p>Starbucks opened its bathrooms to the public in 2018 following an incident in which two black men were arrested at a Philadelphia store. The store\u2019s manager insisted that they make a purchase in order to use the bathroom, and eventually called the police on them for trespassing.<\/p>\n<p>Following a backlash, Starbucks settled with the men for an undisclosed amount of money. It also told all stores in the United States that \u201cany person who enters our spaces, including patios, cafes and restrooms, regardless of whether they make a purchase, is considered a customer.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>\u201cWe don\u2019t want to become a public bathroom, but we\u2019re going to make the right decision 100 percent of the time and give people the key,\u201d Schultz said at that time.<\/p>\n<p>Schultz agreed that undoing the 2018 decision would be \u201ca significant culture shift,\u201d as noted by The NY Times\u2019 Andrew Ross Sorkin.<\/p>\n<p>According to a study (<a href=\"https:\/\/web.archive.org\/web\/20191119033336\/http:\/\/www.umitgurun.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/11\/PublicProvision.pdf\">pdf<\/a>) published in 2019 by the business schools at the University of Texas at Dallas and Boston College, visits to Starbucks dropped by 6.8 percent following the company\u2019s adoption of the open-to-all bathroom policy.<\/p>\n<p>The researchers collaborated with data company SafeGraph and examined cellphone location data from more than 10 million devices between January 2017 and October 2018, which covers a period before and after Starbucks\u2019 bathroom policy shift. When measuring the data against cafe shops located near about 10,800 Starbucks stores across the United States, the researchers found that Starbucks suffered \u201clarge and significant\u201d customer traffic decline compared with rivals.<\/p>\n<p>The traffic dip was 84 percent higher for Starbucks stores that were close to a homeless shelter, according to the study.<\/p>\n<p>In addition, the average income of Starbucks\u2019 customers has dropped compared with that of visitors of other nearby coffee shops. \u201cThis would be consistent with them being more sensitive to crowding and the new visitors brought in by the bathroom policy,\u201d the researchers wrote.<\/p>\n<p>Starbucks disagreed with those findings, saying at that time the alleged decline in traffic didn\u2019t actually translate to a loss of revenue.<\/p>\n<div class=\"author_wrapper\">\n<div class=\"one_author_block round\">\n<div class=\"top_row\">\n\t\t\t\t\t<a href=\"https:\/\/www.theepochtimes.com\/author-gq-pan\"><\/a><\/p>\n<p>Follow<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<p>Bill Pan is a reporter for The Epoch Times.<\/p>\n<\/p><\/div>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Starbucks is reconsidering its open-to-all bathroom policy because worsening mental health problems among the public are posing a threat to employees and customers.Howard Schultz, the CEO of the coffee shop<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":2315279,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_mo_disable_npp":"","fifu_image_url":"","fifu_image_alt":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1512949","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1512949","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1512949"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1512949\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/2315279"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1512949"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1512949"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1512949"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}