Starbucks or Chic-fil-A?
Last week, Daniel Piepenbring opined in The New Yorker how terrible the Chic-fil-A “creepy infiltration” of Manhattan was. His beef (no pun intended) is with the company’s “pervasive Christian traditionalism” and CEO Dan Cathy, who “has been accused of bigotry.” Piepenbring claims the Chic-fil-A public affirmation “to treat every person with honor, dignity and respect” is a sham, alleging the company “has quietly continued to donate to anti-LGBT groups.” Perhaps that is the truth.
Chic-fil-A’s corporate purpose still intends “to glorify God” and the entire chain still closes on Sunday to honor the Fourth Commandment (remember the sabbath day, to keep it holy). Evangelical Christians usually do support right-to-life, school prayer, heterosexual marriage, and the public celebration of Christian holidays (Easter egg hunts in public parks and Nativity scenes in front of the county courthouse). And you just thought it was a tasty chicken sandwich in a clean and friendly restaurant, didn’t you?
Piepenbring reviewed Chic-fil-A’s fourth Manhattan restaurant on Fulton Street, and his primary culinary critique was, “The air smelled fried.” He failed to mention Fulton Street is the chain’s largest restaurant and employees 150 New Yorkers. He did not include the four New York franchises donate 17,000 pounds of food to New York’s homeless annually. He never shared the family-owned, tax-paying, job-creating, customer-satisfying company will soon be the third-largest fast-food chain in the world. Daniel’s article was a “hit piece” approved by his Manhattan editors, but it has drawn criticism from many readers.
Critics see a double standard at The New Yorker, which has not criticized the “infiltration” of New York by halal food shops and their Muslim owners. Halal food shops routinely display Quran verses on the walls in open tribute to the Muslim owner’s faith. Let me be crystal clear: Muslim halal food shops – or Hassidic Jewish delicatessens – can promote their faith in the workplace. The 1stamendment protects this right. Yet, it is entirely illiberal for The New Yorker to attack Christian business owners for promoting their faith – especially when 75 percent of polled Americans in 2015 identified themselves as Christian (source: Gallup).
Piepenbring is typical of far-left journalists in New York: galled by New Yorkers that sell out their anti-Trump and anti-Christian values for a fried chicken sandwich. In the blue-state utopia, liberals cannot support a conservative purveyor of fried food – based in Atlanta (of all places) – especially when there are Democrat-supporting Starbucks all over Manhattan. Houston Street, we have a problem!
You want irony? It was anti-Trump (that racist) Howard Schultz’s coffee shop in Philadelphia that called in the police to remove two black men from the premises once a white female employee asked Rashon Nelson and Donte Robinson to leave after they had used the bathroom, did not buy anything, and were just hanging out (until their business associate arrived). When Nelson and Robinson refused to leave, she called the police. This is true: the hippy-dippy coffee shop called the cops to remove two black men from the premises.
I am an American businessman and know Starbucks is in the business of selling over-priced coffee to make a profit, but I have observed the company’s business model promotes the idea of their coffee shops as the third place in their customer’s lives – going so far as to call customers partners. I frequent Starbucks and usually observe more partners hanging out than paying up. Obviously, the third-place concept was not lost upon Nelson and Robinson, who scheduled their business rendezvous at Starbucks precisely because they could await their associate’s arrival in relative comfort. Can anyone blame them?
I doubt Nelson and Robinson would have even been noticed by the ever-busy Chic-fil-A employees; but, with 28,000 Starbucks worldwide, a none-too-busy server was bound to take issue with non-paying partners. It happened to two black men, but it could just as easily have happened to loud rednecks in Buckhead or robed Muslims in Georgetown. At issue in Philadelphia was (1) an employee’s expectation that partners should consume the shop’s product for the privilege of hanging out, and (2) a white woman’s insensitivity to race. Starbucks has pledged to re-train every employee to honor all partners and the third-place sanctuary the company promotes.
There is nothing wrong with Starbucks’ liberal corporate values or Chic-fil-A’s Christian corporate values, which are protected by the US Constitution. However, it is wrong for the mainstream media to expect huge corporations to adhere to left-wing socio-political creeds or force employees into a singular left-wing groupthink. American corporations face too much real competition to expect them to serve as America’s do-good academies. It’s hard enough to make a great cup of coffee and tasty chicken sandwich by the millions at a profit.
America’s service sector is an important competitive advantage in a cut-throat global economy. Personally, I like seeing McDonalds and Starbucks whenever I travel overseas, because it means American business values are succeeding – and that is quite enough for me. Be completely honest: do you really want a stump speech at Starbucks or a cappuccino, and do you even care that a Christian profits from your tasty Chic-fil-A nuggets? I didn’t think so. God bless America - and isn't that nice to read?