Starbucks apologized Wednesday after a customer reportedly found a racial slur written on their cup, just two weeks before the coffee chain is set to hold company-wide racial bias training for employees.
A Latino man named Pedro found the word “Beaner” written on his iced coffee drink at a Starbucks near Los Angeles, a local CBS affiliate reported, citing a friend of the man who spoke to the affiliate through a translator.
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“He went to Starbucks, and they asked for his name, and his name is ‘Peter,’ and they wrote this ‘beaner,’” the friend, Miguel Acosta, told the affiliate.
The company issued a statement apologizing for the incident.
“This is not indicative of the type of experience we want our customers to have when they walk into our stores. We have apologized to the customer directly and are working to make things right,” it said, according to CBS2.
Starbucks will close all of its company-owned stores across the nation — more than 8,000 locations — on May 29 to conduct racial-bias training with its employees, weeks after an incident where a store manager in Philadelphia called the police on two black men who were waiting on a friend but who had not ordered anything.