Title: Starbucks CEO: If You Support Traditional Marriage, We Don’t Want Your Business-Fiction! - Truth or Fiction?
Headings: Starbucks CEO: If You Support Traditional Marriage, We Don’t Want Your Business-Fiction!
Starbucks CEO: If You Support Traditional Marriage, We Don’t Want Your Business-Fiction!
Content: The Starbucks CEO didn’t say the company doesn’t want business from people who support traditional marriage. That rumor started in 2013 after Starbucks CEO Howard Schultz made a statement at a shareholder meeting about the company’s support of gay marriage, and it’s impact on the company’s profit margins. Conservative Starbucks investor Tom Strobhar told Schultz that the company’s earnings were “shall we say politely, a bit disappointing” in the first quarter after the National Organization for Marriage announced a boycott of Starbucks over its support of gay marriage. The Starbucks CEO responded: Despite the fact that you cite statistics that are narrow in time, we did provide a 38% shareholder return over the last year. I don’t know how many things you invest in, but I would suspect not many things, companies, products, have returned 38% over the last 12 months. Having said that, it’s not an economic decision. The lens through which we are making that decision is through the lens of our people. We employ 200,000 people at this company, and we want to embrace diversity. Respectfully, if you can get a higher return than the 38% you got last year, it’s a free country;