In closing 8,000 stores for anti-bias training last week, Starbucks aimed to demonstrate that it’s serious about banishing racism and other forms of prejudice from its coffee shops.
But the company’s high-profile move also prompted a moment of self-reflection among local business owners: Could the kind of ugly display of discrimination that occurred at a Starbucks in Philadelphia this spring happen at their coffee counters?
Some are taking action to ensure that it won’t.
“We are thinking about it a lot. When Starbucks does something, we all listen,” said Joanne Chang, the owner of the Flour bakeries chain and the Myers + Chang restaurant in the South End.
At Flour and other service-focused businesses, questions about how to fairly address common customer challenges like loitering and bathroom access have been percolating since the Philadelphia incident. A now-infamous video widely circulated on social media captured what happened after a Starbucks barista complained to police that two black men who had not purchased anything tried to use the bathroom. They were waiting for a friend to arrive, they said.
This week, Chang met with her store managers to discuss Starbucks’s training, asking them to describe the factors they believe led to the confrontation in Philadelphia and to discuss how they’d handle similar situations.
Chang said she’s considering using the anti-bias training materials Starbucks has released publicly to help shape workshops for her team. She is also taking steps, in light of the #MeToo movement, to incorporate sexual harassment training when hiring new employees.
“We are fully aware of our responsibility as employers to be fair and equitable and to set a standard for what it means to work in a great place,” she wrote to employees recently.
Chang isn’t alone. Magnolia Bakery, a New York-based bakery chain that recently opened an outpost in Faneuil Hall, had its employees complete a three-day cultural bias course that emphasized empathy and customer service, said Sara Gramling, the company’s spokeswoman. And Dunkin’ Brands says it plans to have unconscious-bias training available for franchisees to offer their employees by later this summer.
Bob Luz, president of the Massachusetts Restaurant Association, said Starbucks’s training underscores national conversations about race and sexual harassment in the restaurant industry. Those in the service fields are becoming more cognizant of the problems, he said, and more willing to address them.
“If you go back the last six to 12 months, most employers in the hospitality industry are looking inwards and asking ‘Are we doing the business the right way?’ And saying, ‘Let’s make sure that we are,’ ” he said.
Retailers are also paying closer attention to racial profiling and other forms of bias, particularly since a nationally publicized incident last month in a Nordstrom Rack store in St. Louis in which three black teenagers were accused of shoplifting while shopping for their prom.
Doreen Thompson, a spokeswoman for TJX Cos., said that while the company’s code of conduct “clearly states that we do not condone discriminatory behavior of any kind,” TJX has been taking steps to ensure the standards are met.
“We have recently assembled a team of senior leaders from across the organization to consider how we can best reinforce our expectations and sensitize our organization to unconscious bias,” she said, adding that plans for training sessions were underway.
Some government entities are confronting such questions, too. At the Boston Public Library, staff members have recently received training on how to be an “active bystander” who can interrupt or de-escalate a conflict, said spokeswoman Rosemary Lavery, and they will begin implicit-bias training this summer and fall.
“We work with all different types of people, and it’s really important to be open-minded and to serve them the best way possible,” Lavery said, adding that the decision to hold training was not tied to a specific incident.
David Hoffman, who teaches a course in diversity and dispute resolution at Harvard Law School, said the demand for cultural sensitivity and implicit-bias training has taken off in recent months. Lawyers, mental health professionals, and human resources consultants are responding with a growing array of training options, he said.
“Part of the upsurge in interest comes from the political environment, the presidential election, and the Black Lives Matter movement, and another part of it is that a younger cohort is entering the workforce” — people who are more attuned to diversity issues, Hoffman said.
But he warned that simply signing an office up for training does not equate to change, and that companies must commit to incorporating the ideals into their culture.
“Someone who wants to lose weight can go to the gym twice a week for a year or two and achieve their goals. But you can’t go to the gym for 10 hours a day for two days and achieve results,” Hoffman said. “Social organisms like workplaces are similar. You have to work at it.”
And although Starbucks has gotten lots of attention, some shop owners saw its efforts as overwrought and emblematic of the trouble with corporate chains.
“Many indie cafes already have a very open and welcoming approach to the LGBTQ community, POC, and even tolerance toward the homeless,” said Jaime Van Schyndel, founder of the Barismo coffee chain in Greater Boston. “This openness in service separates them from their corporate competitors; it's their edge to compete.”
Among his staffers, many of whom were previously employed by Starbucks, he said, “our conversations have been around a more ‘Well, it's about time’ tack rather than following their lead.”
Janelle Nanos can be reached at janelle.nanos@globe.com. Follow her on Twitter @janellenanos.