Calling all coffee lovers-- or specifically Starbucks coffee lovers out there, here's a news for you. All Starbucks stores located in all parts of North America will no longer accept your personal mugs or reusable tumblers in the stores. This is part of their movement to protect all customers and their staffs against the spread of Novel Coronavirus or COVID-19.
No more personal mugs, please! Starbucks stops accepting reusable mugs due to COVID-19
Starting on Wednesday, Mar. 4, all stores that are located in North America will temporarily stop accepting personal mugs from their customers as a part of their counter-action against the spread of Coronavirus or COVID-19 in the country.
Starbucks management said that customers that want to avail their beverages might have to settle first in paper cups until the issue of Coronavirus subsides or totally goes away for good.
"As North America began experiencing heightened concerns, we quickly initiated a regular cadence of communications with our store partners to ensure they have the support they need," said Starbucks press release.
If you are thinking of whether your discount for the reusable cup is still valid even without the reusable cup, Starbucks said that customers can always avail of the 10-cent discount. Just show your reusable cup, and the store will credit the discount, but they will no longer use the cup.
Rossann Williams, Starbucks' president of company-operated businesses in the United States and Canada, is optimistic that the issue of Coronavirus would be gone soon, and this situation will only be temporary for their customers.
Starbucks has a new health and cleanliness protocol in all of its stores
Since the emergence of COVID-19, Starbucks said that they already implemented a lot of new health protocols in all their stores in order to protect not just their customers, but also their staffs.
Here are some of their newly implemented guidelines in accordance with Coronavirus prevention, as written on their website:
- Starbucks is taking guidance from the CDC and local health authorities, they increased cleaning and sanitizing for all company-operated stores to help prevent the spread of all germs, adding paid time for their partners supporting this work.
- Starbucks provided scenario-based procedural information to their store teams on how to report and support anyone that may express they've been impacted by the virus, including store closure decision making support.
- Starbucks restricted all business-related air travel, domestic and international through Mar. 31.
- Starbucks modified or postponed large meetings across our offices in the U.S. and Canada.
Starbucks has been giving discounts for all of its customers that will use their mugs since 1985. Since then, the number of plastic cups that are widely used all over the world was lessened, and Starbucks obviously made a significant contribution to this action.
