The announcement that Starbucks would be hiring 10,000 refugees came shortly after President Trump initiated his executive order to temporarily ban immigration. The company’s announcement elicited cheers across the country, but recent information shows the announcement caused a shift in popularity.
CEO Howard Schultz released the hiring statement saying:
Let me begin with the news that is immediately in front of us: we have all been witness to the confusion, surprise and opposition to the Executive Order that President Trump issued on Friday, effectively banning people from several predominantly Muslim countries from entering the United States, including refugees fleeing wars . . . There are more than 65 million citizens of the world recognized as refugees by the United Nations, and we are developing plans to hire 10,000 of them over five years in the 75 countries around the world where Starbucks does business.
According to Yahoo Finances, the company’s popularity has dropped by two-thirds since late January. Yahoo used the YouGov BrandIndex to track the number of perception levels. The information was primarily gained through the perception tracker which measures who has heard about the brand in a certain amount of time (this can be good or bad). Although their numbers are still good, they are drastically different from where they were (as seen in the image below).
A large portion of negative feedback came because people believed Starbucks was hiring refugees in the place of veterans. While they are filling spaces that could occupy veterans, they also have a program that has hired 8,000 veterans since 2014. This is one of the points Starbucks has tried to reveal during the past few weeks.
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Credit: Daily Wire