Starbucks adds salad to menu, settles discrimination lawsuit
June 17, 2007
Starbucks Corp. will begin selling a curried chicken and Asian sesame-noodle salad at its U.S.-based locations, according to an article in the Seattle Post-Intelligencer. The salad will sell for about $6.
The Seattle-based coffee chain also plans to offer at least four other salad varities in addition to recently-added warm breakfast and lunch offerings. Additionally, the company has agreed to pay former employee Christine Drake $85,000. Drake filed a disability discrimination lawsuit in 2006 with the U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission.
The suit was filed after the company fired Drake, who has a bipolar disorder. The EEOC told the Associated Press June 13 that Starbucks gave extra training and support to Drake, who worked as a barista at a Washington State-neighborhood coffee shop for more than two years, starting in 2001. But in her third year, new management at the coffee shop discontinued the extra support and then fired her, which the EEOC said violated the Americans with Disabilities Act. According to the Associated Press, the EEOC said Starbucks agreed to pay Drake $75,000 and give $10,000 to the Disability Rights Legal Center, which provides lawyers for low-income disabled people facing discrimination.
