Has Starbucks won its union battle?

Did Starbucks win its labor battle? This week’s episode of the Restaurant Business podcast A Deeper Dive features a debate between myself and Peter Romeo, the editor at large of RB, on the success of Starbucks’ pushback against unions. For some time, it seemed that another Starbucks store formed a union every few hours. The push, the most successful effort to unionize a restaurant chain, contributed to massive changes at the Seattle-based coffee giant, particularly in the executive team. That push has slowed in recent months. Romeo and I debate whether that’s a sign that Starbucks has won. We also talk about a potential rail strike, which could inject yet another black swan event onto a restaurant industry that has dealt with several of them over the past three years. And we talk about the U.S. Small Business Administration’s recent decision to send out more Restaurant Revitalization Fund grants to operators.