Now even Starbucks is tossing aside the queer community. I will now paste reporting from the Starbucks Workers United Twitter. I don’t recommend you actually go on that site, the replies are full of blue-check fascists.
spoiler
BREAKING: In the middle of Pride Month, Starbucks BANS Pride decorations in stores across the United States. For the last two weeks, Starbucks workers have taken to social media to report that the company is no longer allowing Pride decorations in-store. This seems to be the first year the publicly “pro-LGBTQ+” company has taken this kind of stance. Taking a cue from Target, who bowed to anti-LGBTQ+ pressure and removed pride merchandise, corporate and district management are taking down the pride decorations that have become an annual tradition in stores. In union stores, where Starbucks claims they are unable to make “unilateral changes” without bargaining, the company took down Pride decorations and flags anyway - ignoring their own anti-union talking point.
Starbucks is powered by many queer workers, but management has failed to materially support the LGBTQ+ community. Last October, some workers have reported that their transgender benefit plan changed, causing them to pay out of pocket fees and lose access to certain providers. If Starbucks was a true ally, they would stand up for us, especially during a time when LGBTQ+ people are under attack. A company that cares wouldn’t turn their back on the LGBTQ+ community to protect their already astronomically high profits. True allyship with the LGBTQ+ community is negotiating a union contract that legally locks-in our benefits, our freedom of expression, and ways to hold management accountable.
Starbucks Corporate is denying any change to their policies on Pride this year - but if that were true, why are there countless stories where workers are claiming the opposite? Starbucks partners have been making TikToks about the situation in stores - some going as far back as weeks ago. The company can’t ignore what is obviously a huge shift for this year’s Pride in stores.
This kind of exists. For instance, Chick-Fil-A uses its profits to fund LGBT extermination, but has now announced a diversity officer or something in order to court a handful of gays (a lot already still buy their chicken - don’t ask me why). Cracker Barrel recently signaled in favor of the LGBT+ community, but the whole theming of the chain is for a conservative demographic. Of course with both cases, the reactionaries had a huge fit over it online.
The holy grail of quantum marketing is to have separate subsidiaries of a giant corporation to market towards different demographics. This probably exists but IDK any examples. I know people like to point out how different international branches pretend or pretend not to care about gays though.
That was sort of rhe original idea that made GM a world-conquering success in the early 20th century-- although the market segmentation was largely price tier, and therefore more age-group/social strata based. If you already know how to sell Cadillacs with a very different marketing message than Chevrolets, it’s a small step to put rainbow badges on one brand but not the other.