Tag: Starbucks

Is this a good thing or a bad thing that South Korea has so many Starbucks stores?:

 South Korea held the fourth-largest number of Starbucks stores around the globe as of last year, data showed Monday, driven by solid demand from local consumers.

South Korea held 1,893 Starbucks stores as of 2023, up 116 from a year earlier, according to the data compiled by the U.S. coffee giant.

The figure falls just behind Japan’s count at 1,901, despite the Asian neighbor having a population twice the size of South Korea’s.

The Seattle-based coffee giant introduced its first store in Seoul in 1999 in partnership with Shinsegae Group, a Korean retail group.

Yonhap

You can read more at the link.

Here is the latest controversy with the cancel culture crowd, it is now controversial to be anti-communism:

There are signs of a boycott movement against Starbucks Korea sparked by Shinsegae Vice Chairman Chung Yong-jin’s recent anti-communist remarks on social media. Shinsegae is the parent company of E-mart, which owns 67.5 percent of Starbucks Korea.

On Monday, some netizens started spreading images on various online communities calling for a boycott. 

On Jan. 6, Vice Chairman Chung had uploaded on Instagram an image of an article from Korean daily Chosun Ilbo that had a picture of Chinese President Xi Jinping and was criticizing the Korean government’s silence toward a high-level Chinese official who had referred to Korea as a “minor country.” Chung tagged the image with the hashtag, “destroycommunism” (“myeolgong” in Korean), and it set off controversy. Later that day, the vice chairman replaced the image with a photo of North Korean leader Kim Jong-un. The vice chairman has uploaded anti-communist posts on social media five times in recent months.

The incident spread to the political circle and the spokeperson for ruling Democratic Party of Korea (DPK) presidential candidate Lee Jae-myung subsequently tweeted that he will not drink Starbucks coffee anymore. Supporters of the DPK showed their intention to join the boycott of Shinsegae. 

Korea Times

You can read more at the link, but maybe I missed something here; what is controversial about being anti-communist? Is it now inappropriate to be against regime’s with horrible human rights records?

This seems to be the wave of the future, cashless stores:

Starbucks Coffee Korea, the local unit of the U.S. coffee giant, said Thursday it will begin a test run of cashless stores at three outlets next month amid rising use of credit card and mobile payment systems.

The stores at the country’s major office districts — Gangnam and Guro in Seoul, and Pangyo, just south of the capital — have been tapped to start testing the new system April 23, according to the company.

When launched, it will mark the second trial for the global coffee giant, following its first cashless store under test run in Seattle, the United States, it said.

Paying with cash has been constantly declining at Starbucks stores in South Korea, from 31 percent of the total in 2010 to 15 percent in 2013 and 7 percent last year, the company said.  [Korea Times]

You can read more at the link.

I wonder if this woman has mental problems because can someone really be this stupid?:

A woman was kicked out of a Starbucks in California for a racially insensitive remark to two college students speaking Korean.

South Korean international student Annie An was at a tutoring session with Sean Lee, a South Korean native and UC Berkeley student at a Starbucks in Walnut Creek, California when a patron approached them after hearing the two speak Korean.

“This is America. Use English only,” said the unnamed woman, who was sitting nearby using a laptop, according to An.

An continued to film the woman as Starbucks employees were asking her to leave, KRON reported.

“I hate it,” the woman says in the video. “If you can sit and be quiet, fine, but I don’t want to hear your language.”
Starbucks employees continue to ask the woman to leave. “They’re welcome to be here, they’re doing nothing wrong. You’re the one that’s causing an issue,” an employee tells her. “You’re gonna be in trouble when I get this letter out,” the woman responds. An employee points out that she’s just tapping numbers on the keyboard.Another employee tells her if she doesn’t leave, they will call the police. Three officers later escorted the woman out of the coffee shop. The woman continued to complain about the students speaking Korean as she was forced to leave, according to An. The video went viral and has been viewed by over a million viewers and has been shared over 5,000 times by Friday on Facebook. Many Facebook users were outraged by the woman’s comments.  [Newsweek]

You can read more at the link.

Starbucks has opened a coffee shop with tatami rooms in Kyoto (and I can't decide whether I like it) https://t.co/4NiEywU7L6 pic.twitter.com/rGZdjEc2a4

— Anna Fifield (@annafifield) June 29, 2017