The Fiscal Sip? Starbucks’ Coffee Cups Get Political
As negotiations to prevent the nation from falling into financial disrepair have once again stalled thanks to partisan rhetoric, Starbucks—the nation’s leading coffee chain—has taken to using its coffee cups to prevent the much-feared “fiscal cliff.”
Reuters reports that Starbucks Chief Executive Howard Schultz urged employees at Starbucks’ 120 Washington-area locations to write “come together” on customers’ coffee cups last week as lawmakers continue to struggle to come to an agreement after negotiations failed before the holiday.
“Starbucks’ cup campaign aims to send a message to sharply divided politicians and serve as a rallying cry for the public in the days leading up to lawmakers’ Jan. 1 deadline to deliver a plan to avert harsh across-the-board government spending reductions and tax increases that could send the United States back into recession,” according to Reuters.
“We’re paying attention, we’re greatly disappointed in what’s going on and we deserve better,” Schultz told Reuters in a telephone interview. “We are facing such dysfunction, irresponsibility and lack of leadership” less than two years after the debt ceiling crisis, Schultz added.
A financial crisis would surely cripple Starbucks business as well as countless others. Schultz’s decision came after he joined a number of other business leaders in endorsing the Campaign to Fix the Debt—a nonpartisan group working to help lawmakers come to a meeting point on these pressing financial issues before the January 1 deadline.
And Starbucks is reportedly taking its “come together” message beyond the cup—using Twitter and Facebook to draw attention to the issue: “If (talks) do not progress, we will make this much bigger,” Schultz said.
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Image: visual panic
