What was claimed
Starbucks has vowed to hire 10,000 Muslims.
Our verdict
This is false. In 2017, then-CEO of Starbucks, Howard Schultz, said that the company would globally hire 10,000 refugees over five years, not specifically Muslims.
Starbucks pledged to hire 10,000 refugees, not specifically Muslims
27 November 2023
A post on Facebook claims Starbucks has vowed to hire 10,000 Muslim staff.
In January 2017, Starbucks pledged to hire 10,000 refugees, not specifically Muslims, globally.
This promise was made in the wake of then-US President Donald Trump’s first executive order suspending immigration to the United States from seven Muslim-majority countries.
Howard Schultz, who was CEO of Starbucks, said in a message to employees on 29 January 2017: “Let me begin with the news that is immediately in front of us: we have all been witness to the confusion, surprise and opposition to the Executive Order that President Trump issued on Friday, effectively banning people from several predominantly Muslim countries from entering the United States, including refugees fleeing wars.”
He went on to say: “There are more than 65 million citizens of the world recognized as refugees by the United Nations, and we are developing plans to hire 10,000 of them over five years in the 75 countries around the world where Starbucks does business.”
Nowhere did Mr Schultz claim the people hired would only be Muslims or refugees specifically from the seven countries named in the executive order.
According to Starbucks’s 2022 environmental and social impact report, more than 1,100 refugees were hired in the US, Canada, Europe, the Middle East and Africa in the 2022 financial year. This took the total to “more than 4,000” since 2017, less than half the number pledged.
We’ve previously checked false claims regarding Muslims, including that they are exempt from council tax if they claim their home is a place of worship and that having a sharia-compliant mortgage means stamp duty isn’t paid.
Image courtesy of Asael Peña
This article is part of our work fact checking potentially false pictures, videos and stories on Facebook. You can read more about this—and find out how to report Facebook content—here. For the purposes of that scheme, we’ve rated this claim as false because Starbucks pledged to hire 10,000 refugees, not 10,000 Muslims.