Espresso Yourself: The Happiness in Rejecting Starbucks

1. I used to think the Starbucks atmosphere was nice, but I don’t anymore, and it is clear that their coffee is just... coffee.
2. I’ve discovered that drinking different coffees leads to a more joyful and varied human experience than always buying the same coffee from the same company—who knew!
3. I feel good buying coffee from local businesses because it helps my local economy. (Contrary to what some assume, Starbucks is not a franchise but a giant centralized corporation.)
4. I admit, for years, I knew that despite Starbucks’s remarkable profitability, it regularly obstructs workers from organizing labor unions, reducing the negotiating power of working people.
5. In Oct of 2023, Starbucks crossed a line when it filed a retaliatory lawsuit to punish a small labor union over a social media post it disagreed with, exposing itself as a corporate bully.
6. Today, the Starbucks brand just makes me think of bullying, so I can no longer enjoy its atmosphere or coffee. 

In October 2023, Starbucks filed a lawsuit against its employees’ union, Starbucks Workers United, for trademark infringement. However, the union had been using the trademark for years without incident. Starbucks clarified that the lawsuit retaliated against the union because a member tweeted, “Solidarity with Palestine!” a harmless statement of unity with the good people of Palestine. But Starbucks conflated supporting Palestinians with supporting extremism—a common tactic used by disinformation spreaders to delegitimize the Palestinian people, causing the world to feel less outrage about the long-term occupation of Palestine, their ethnic cleansing, and the current ongoing genocide.

Putting aside where you might stand on this topic, Starbucks could have just called the parties responsible for this post and tried to work things out. They filed a lawsuit instead, choosing the most harmful approach, weaponizing the justice system, an abuse only afforded to the super-rich and powerful.

The coffee I drink today is sold to me by businesses that don’t engage in ideological bullying that provides cover to genocide, ethnic cleansing, and military occupation—just the way I like it!