After a difficult year of controversy, Starbucks has been barreling forward in all attempts to solidify itself as a progressive company. Last Tuesday, the company announced the opening of their first all American Sign Language (ASL) store in Washington D.C., which provides a whole new realm of opportunity to hearing impaired people as well as bringing attention to the lack of representation of an entire population.
While it is not certain to say if an oligopolistic, $30 billion company can be a true moral compass for society, Starbucks knows that its cultural influence is massive, and even people who are not frequent Starbucks customers know what a “PSL” or “frappuccino” is.
The reach and scope of what kind of change the company can accomplish is quite impressive, so it is definitely in everyone’s best interest that it is used for some good.
Anyone who has worked for Starbucks can tell you how dedicated the company is to ensuring that the environment is amicable and welcoming. This is what Starbucks calls the “Starbucks Experience.”
The Starbucks Experience is all about creating a third place, away from work and home life, where customers feel like family. This is stressed so heavily in Starbucks partner training that it has been rather disheartening for hearing-impaired people to be practically deprived of such an intended atmosphere.
Naturally, wherever Starbucks fails to perform adequately, the company immediately kicks things into high gear and goes above and beyond to meet its own expectations. Let’s not forget how the company resorted to closing all stores nationally for sensitivty training after two black customers were victims of racial profiling earlier this year.
The language barrier between the hearing impaired and those who are not makes it extremely difficult for the hearing impaired to find work and to feel welcomed in many spaces. According to the Deaf Employment Report, 48 percent of deaf people in the United States were unemployed as of 2014. Discrimination against the hearing impaired population can go widely overlooked if more prominent voices in society do not speak up.
This is why an all ASL store of one of the most massive companies in the world is so impactful. Not only does it give job opportunities to a community ostracized, but it also dares other companies to step up in similar ways. Being an industry leader means that with this single store, Starbucks is setting a standard and expectation to all other coffee shops and fast food establishments.
The Starbucks news release also showed the extensive use of design by deaf artists and the inclusion of the “sign of the week,” which will be a word or a phrase that non-signers can use to order an item instead of just writing it on the tablet.
When interviewing partners of the new store, CNN reported that the store is meant to be a place for signers and non-signers to work together in a collaborated manner, helping unify two communities under one roof to help others gain insight into a world that is unfamiliar to them.
It would be easy to write off the ASL cafe as just a publicity stunt or complain that this is only one store in only one location, but it is going to take some time to make a societal change in how we view the service industry. Starbucks is simply taking the first step.
