Republica Press

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REPUBLICA PRESS
Your Business & Political News Source

Coffeehouses

Taking On Starbucks, Inspired by Bernie Sanders

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Starbucks allows employees who work at least 20 hours a week to obtain health coverage, more generous than most competitors, and has said it will increase average pay for hourly employees to nearly $17 an hour by this summer, well above the industry norm. The company also offers to pay the tuition of employees admitted to pursue an online bachelor’s degree at Arizona State University, helping it attract workers with college aspirations.

Such people, in turn, tend to be sympathetic to unions and a variety of social activism. A recent Gallup poll found that people under 35 or who are liberal are substantially more likely than others to support unions.

Several Starbucks workers seeking to organize unions in Buffalo; Boston; Chicago; Seattle; Knoxville, Tenn.; Tallahassee, Fla.; and the Denver area appeared to fit this profile, saying they were either strong supporters of Mr. Sanders and other progressive politicians, had attended college or both. Most were under 30.

“I’ve been involved in political organizing, the Bernie Sanders campaign,” said Brick Zurek, a leader of a union campaign at a Starbucks in Chicago. “That gave me a lot of skill.” Mx. Zurek, who uses gender-neutral courtesy titles and pronouns, also said they had a bachelor’s degree.

Len Harris, who has helped lead a campaign at a Starbucks near Denver, said that “I admire the progressivism, the sense of community” of politicians like Mr. Sanders and Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, Democrat of New York. She said that she had graduated from college and that she was awaiting admissions decisions for graduate school.

And most union supporters have drawn inspiration from their colleagues in Buffalo. Sydney Durkin and Rachel Ybarra, who are helping to organize a Starbucks in Seattle, said workers at their store discussed the Buffalo campaign almost daily as it unfolded and that one reached out to the union after the National Labor Relations Board announced the initial results of the Buffalo elections in December. (The union’s second victory was announced Monday, after the labor board resolved ballot challenges.)

Ms. Ybarra said the victory showed workers it was possible to unionize despite company opposition. “The Buffalo folks became superheroes,” she said. “A lot of us spent so much time being afraid of retaliation — none of us could afford to lose our jobs, have our hours cut.”

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Starbucks says its U.S. sales have made a ‘full recovery.’

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Seeing signs that customers are eager to gather and put the dark days of the pandemic behind them, the coffee giant Starbucks said that its sales in the United States made a “full recovery” in the first three months of the year.

Same-store sales in the U.S. climbed 9 percent in the company’s second quarter compared with the same period last year, while global revenues climbed 11 percent to $6.7 billion.

“In the last quarter, we’re seeing very early signs that friends and family were celebrating being together again,” Kevin Johnson, the president and chief executive of Starbucks, said on a call with analysts on Tuesday after the close of the markets. “While certainly not all markets are opening at the same speed in terms of vaccine distribution, we know this is the key that enables all of us to once again be together.”

Starbucks made a profit of $659 million in the quarter, up significantly from $328 million a year earlier, when many of its stores were closed because of the quarantine restrictions around the world.

Starbucks said it expected global same-store sales for the full year to climb as much as 23 percent as the rest of the world recovers and reopens from the pandemic.

“While the Covid-19 pandemic is not over, this moment is giving us confidence to raise our full-year guidance,” Mr. Johnson said.

U.S. members enrolled in its loyalty rewards program grew 18 percent over the past year, Mr. Johnson said; there are now more than 23 million 90-day active members. Drive-through activity also remained robust, with higher ticket sales as customers ordered multiple drinks and often added a food item to their order, like the Impossible Breakfast Sandwich or cake pops, Mr. Johnson said.

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In Empty Amsterdam, Reconsidering Tourism

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Support for the prostitutes and coffee shop owners was echoed in several interviews with Amsterdam residents, including Roy Van Kempen, a 31-year-old marketing manager who has lived in Amsterdam since 2008.

“Paris has the Eiffel Tower, and we have the Red Light District and this idea that everything is possible in Amsterdam. And I would like to keep it like this, actually,” he said.

But Irina, Mr. Helms, Mr. Van Kempen and half a dozen other Amsterdammers interviewed agreed that the city center has a major problem: A tourism “monoculture” has taken root, and residents are being pushed out. Businesses and services that used to cater to locals — high-quality bakeries, butcher shops, and the like — have been replaced by trinket shops, ice-cream parlors and “Nutella shops,” which serve takeaway waffles and other treats smeared in the hazelnut spread, mainly to tourists. Meanwhile, rising housing prices — due, in part, to the rise of Airbnb and other vacation rental platforms — have made the city center unaffordable for many locals.

This monoculture has been thrown into the spotlight over the past year, Ms. Udo said, adding that she had been struck by how deserted the city center has felt during the pandemic, especially compared to other parts of Amsterdam. “That was a real eye-opener,” she said. “There are not enough people living there and working there to get this liveliness back in the neighborhood when the visitors are gone.”

Alongside the restrictions proposed by the mayor’s office, city officials and some residents have also tried softer approaches to tackling the problems associated with tourism, some of which were rolled out with success before the pandemic.

One critical strategy has been to try to reach visitors before they even arrive. Amsterdam’s Enjoy and Respect campaign, which launched in 2018, targeted the primary source of the behavior problems — Dutch and British men between the ages of 18 and 34 — with messages about the fines they could incur by urinating in the street, littering or getting drunk in public areas. A subsequent survey showed that the messages had reached at least part of that audience, but measuring the campaign’s effectiveness has proved to be a challenge.

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