{"id":25921,"date":"2023-04-12T12:53:04","date_gmt":"2023-04-12T19:53:04","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/occupysf.net\/?p=25921"},"modified":"2023-04-12T12:53:09","modified_gmt":"2023-04-12T19:53:09","slug":"this-sf-starbucks-seating-was-removed-employees-think-they-know-why","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/occupysf.net\/index.php\/2023\/04\/12\/this-sf-starbucks-seating-was-removed-employees-think-they-know-why\/","title":{"rendered":"This SF Starbucks’ seating was removed. Employees think they know why."},"content":{"rendered":"\n

‘We had no say in whether or not we were going to keep our seating.’<\/a><\/h3>\n\n\n\n

Susana Guerrero<\/a>, SFGATE<\/p>\n\n\n\n

April 11, 2023 (SFGate.com)<\/a><\/a><\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"At
At the Starbucks on 18th Street in the Castro District of San Francisco, benches outside the store constitute the only seating for customers, March 23, 2023.Douglas Zimmerman\/SFGATE<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

Starbucks stores around San Francisco have been removing indoor seating. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Earlier this year, The San Francisco Standard<\/a> reported that numerous Starbucks locations in downtown San Francisco had done away with their furniture. Last month, another city store followed suit when the Castro Starbucks at 4094 18th St., locally known as \u201cBearbucks,\u201d removed all seating and tables, in addition to making other interior changes, as first reported by Hoodline<\/a>. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

In the days that followed the redesign, locals took notice and shared their grievances on social media. One customer\u00a0tweeted<\/a>, \u201c@starbucks removed all seating from its SF\/Castro location \u2014 grab and go is now the model.\u00a0 SMH, you can bet this will become a thing. RIP my third office @Starbucks.\u201d Another deemed the move \u201cclassist and ableist<\/a>,\u201d in line with\u00a0claims the chain<\/a>\u00a0is trying to bar homeless individuals from entering.\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Removing indoor seating \u2014 which patrons rely on for remote work and community gatherings \u2014 is a dramatic change. Greg Zajac, a shift supervisor at the unionized 18th Street Starbucks<\/a>, told SFGATE that employees could not weigh in on the remodel. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Kyle Trainer, a barista at the location, said he believed Starbucks eliminated seating due to homeless individuals and people with mental illnesses around the neighborhood. He added that Starbucks does not adequately train team members to manage stressful situations and that the chain would rather \u201cremove the seating, close the bathroom and not deal with it.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"Baristas<\/figure>\n\n\n\n
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The Starbucks location at 4094 18th St. underwent a remodel in March that effectively removed all seating. (Photo: Douglas Zimmerman\/SFGATE)<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cStarbucks [is] attempting to remove the issues of homeless and mental illness from stores,\u201d Trainer said. \u201cInstead of exploring more productive and caring options regarding these issues, they would rather take the easy way out, regardless of how their workers or customers feel.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

SFGATE reached out to Starbucks to find out whether the coffee chain is trending toward a no-seat layout around the city \u2014 and if so, why. A spokesperson did not answer in clear terms, stating that Starbucks operates under various formats, which include grab-and-go, drive-thus, and full-service cafes.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

When it comes to individual store changes, however, the spokesperson said that Starbucks empowers local cafe leaders (or supervisors) to make decisions on how they want to modify store operations.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Zajac identified Starbucks regional manager Niamh Ramirez as the individual who issued the directive to eliminate chairs at the 18th Street location. After several requests, Ramirez declined to comment on this story. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cWe had no say in whether or not we were going to keep our seating,\u201d Zajac said. \u201cWe\u2019re fighting to get them back.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"A
A customer waits for their order inside a Starbucks store on 18th Street in San Francisco’s Castro District, where all the chairs for customers have been removed, on March 23, 2023.Douglas Zimmerman\/SFGATE<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

According to Zajac, the Castro Starbucks started making changes last July when a former supervisor decided to close off access to the restroom after feeling \u201cuncomfortable\u201d with people using the facilities. The chairs in the lobby were subsequently removed, Zajac said.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cOriginally, when the seating closed, we all kind of went along with it for a while, but maybe two to three weeks afterward, we got a new manager, and we said we\u2019d love to have a conversation about seating.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Amid the remodel in March, Zajac learned that the Castro shop was flagged as a \u201chigh incident store,\u201d which was one of the reasons that the chairs were cleared. He explained that Starbucks deems shoplifting, sleeping, swearing and assault \u201cwithin or around our space\u201d as examples that could define a \u201chigh incident store.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Starbucks lists many of the items Zajac mentioned as activities it won\u2019t tolerate, per its \u201cThird Place Policy<\/a>,\u201d which bans sleeping, drug consumption and loud noises, among other things. Specific details on what determined the Castro location as a \u201chigh incident store\u201d were not shared by the company.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cBaristas and [shift] supervisors are not made aware of the criteria to classify a store as high incident,\u201d Zajac said.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Late last year, a former Starbucks barista alleged that the company was making changes to keep homeless individuals out. In a viral Tiktok video<\/a>, former Starbucks barista Lizette Roman-Johnston shared that the coffee chain had covered power outlets due to \u201c\u2018safety concerns\u2019 regarding the homeless.\u201d Roman-Johnston told SFGATE<\/a> in late 2022 that a barista at Oakland\u2019s Lakeshore neighborhood told her people experiencing homelessness were the reason some stores were covering outlets. An employee at a different Oakland Starbucks gave the same explanation to SFGATE as the reason for that store\u2019s secured outlets while adding that they didn\u2019t agree with the decision.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

At the time of SFGATE\u2019s reporting last year, a spokesperson denied that Starbucks was both removing seating and covering outlets<\/a> to dissuade homeless people and people with mental illnesses from using cafe spaces.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

When the Starbucks spokesperson was asked for this story if it was reasonable to believe that the company sought to remove seating to discourage homeless people or people with mental illnesses from spending time in Starbucks stores, they said that all customers were welcome inside stores as long as they respected customers, store leaders and the company\u2019s \u201cThird Place Policy.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Zajac said that the lack of furniture has stripped the sense of community the Castro location formerly had.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cThis location was once a local meeting place for the LGBTQIA+ community and nicknamed \u2018Bearbucks,\u2019 which is a nod to the abundance of gay men in the area,\u201d Zajac said. \u201cWith the removal of seating, we are denying our community that \u2018welcome\u2019 feeling.\u201d<\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Written By Susana Guerrero<\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Susana Guerrero is a reporter for SFGATE covering the Bay Area’s food scene. She received an M.A. in journalism from USC Annenberg School for Communication and Journalism and earned a B.A. in English from UC Berkeley. She’s a Bay Area native. Email her at Susana.Guerrero@sfgate.com<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

‘We had no say in whether or not we were going to keep our seating.’ Susana Guerrero, SFGATE April 11, 2023 (SFGate.com) Starbucks stores around San Francisco have been removing indoor seating.  Earlier this year, The San Francisco Standard reported that numerous Starbucks locations in downtown San Francisco had done away with their… Continue reading → <\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[407,406],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/occupysf.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/25921"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/occupysf.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/occupysf.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/occupysf.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/occupysf.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=25921"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/occupysf.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/25921\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":25922,"href":"https:\/\/occupysf.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/25921\/revisions\/25922"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/occupysf.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=25921"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/occupysf.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=25921"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/occupysf.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=25921"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}