Company shuts coffee shops early to put in place training for 175,000 employees – but says ‘isn’t a solution, it’s a first step’

More than 8,000 Starbucks coffee shops in the US closed their doors for racial bias training on Tuesday, in what the company said “isn’t a solution, it’s a first step” as it sought to rebuild its damaged reputation.

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Starbucks announced the training after two black men were arrested in one of the company’s Philadelphia cafes in April. Staff had called the police, accusing the men of trespassing, despite them explaining they were in the store for a business meeting.

Coffee shops across the country shut down in the early afternoon, as Starbucks walked 175,000 employees through a carefully designed training program on “understanding racial bias and the history of public accommodations in the United States”.

On Tuesday morning, one of several Starbucks stores near Times Square in the heart of New York City had a poster in the window informing customers that they would be closing early, “so our team can reconnect with our mission and share ideas about how to make Starbucks even more welcoming”.

At 11am – three hours before the store closed – 14 employees were already undergoing the four-hour training, in a reserved area of the bustling coffee shop. Each employee had been given a Starbucks branded booklet titled “My notebook”, and were watching videos on tablets.

One page of the notebooks had the heading “What makes me, me and you, you?” Another asked employees to think about where they “feel a sense of belonging”. After watching videos, the employees held discussions in small groups.

A video describing the training, released by Starbucks before Tuesday, showed a clip of Rashon Nelson and Donte Robinson being arrested. “That is not who we aspire to be,” a voiceover says as the footage is played.

The video showed a booklet that each Starbucks store will work through with its employees. Workers will watch the documentary You’re Welcome, filmmaker Stanley Nelson’s examination of black people’s experience in public spaces, Starbucks said, before being encouraged to take part in conversations about “understanding racial bias and the history of public accommodations in the United States”.

The company said its workers will be asked to consider the impact of racial discrimination on public spaces “from the civil rights movement all the way to today”.

Starbucks executive vice-president for US retail, Rossann Williams, said that the training “isn’t a solution, it’s a first step”. Williams said the full curriculum will be made available to the public “after May 29”, although Starbucks did not say exactly when or where it will be published.

A range of civil rights activists and experts contributed to Starbucks’ training. Heather McGhee, president of Demos, an equal rights thinktank, contributed, as did the former US attorney general Eric Holder and representatives of the NAACP Legal Defense and Education fund.

In April McGhee told the Guardian that Tuesday’s training will serve “really as an introduction” to racial bias. She said she and others were keen that in addition to the training, Starbucks also examine the rules and guidelines that its employees are given.

“It is very important that we take this opportunity to go as deep as we possibly can,” McGhee said.

“To review the policies and procedures, to have a longer-term engagement with Starbucks management about these issues on a deeper level.”