How Starbucks Handled a Brand Crisis by Closing 8000 Stores

On June 3, 2026, the S&P 500 sits at 7,572 and the job market remains tight with 7.6 million openings. But in 2018, Starbucks faced a very different landscape when two Black men were arrested in a Philadelphia store for waiting without ordering. Lucas and Luna dissect how CEO Kevin Johnson turned that moment into a strategic crisis playbook: closing 8,000 stores for a single afternoon to conduct racial-bias training. They walk through the numbers — the cost of lost sales, the stock price reaction, and the lasting cultural impact — and what any business can learn about using transparency over damage control. No corporate spin, just a case study in owning a mistake at scale. #Starbucks #KevinJohnson #RacialBiasTraining #BrandCrisis #CrisisManagement #PR #CorporateCulture #Philadelphia #Retail #Business #FexingoBusiness #BusinessPodcast #Leadership #Transparency #Inclusion #CustomerService #Reputation #StakeholderTrust Keep every episode free: buymeacoffee.com/fexingo