Starbucks apologizes for slur on customer’s order

Starbucks’ day of racial-bias training for its baristas can’t come soon enough.

With less than two weeks to go before the coffee chain closes stores nationwide to educate its nearly 175,000 workers on how not to discriminate against others, Starbucks (SBUX) this week found itself apologizing for doing just that.

The apology on social media came after a customer at a Starbucks in La Cañada Flintridge, California, reportedly found the word “Beaner” — a derogatory term for Mexicans — printed on his coffee drink instead of “Pedro,” his name.

A friend of Pedro’s who translated for him told CBS Los Angeles that his “friend was also sad” about the unfair treatment.

Starbucks did not immediately respond to requests for comment, but it said in an emailed statement to multiple media outlets that it had “apologized to the customer directly” and was “conducting a full investigation into this incident to understand how this happened and to ensure it doesn’t happen again.”

It comes as Starbucks plans to close more than 8,000 of its company-owned stores on May 29 to conduct anti-bias training after a racially charged incident in April. The chain faced a public backlash and calls for a boycott after the arrest of two black men at a Starbucks in Philadelphia.