Coffee Giant Starbucks’ Partnership With Trans Equality Charity Mermaids Is a Big Deal

Starbucks has put its money where its mouth is on trans rights

A Starbucks advert produced in collaboration with transgender equality charity Mermaids aired on Channel 4 last night, as the coffee giant pledges to raise a minimum of £100,000 for the charity alongside the advertising deal, according to Pink News. The advert, which shows James, a trans man, using his name to order a coffee after being deadnamed — referred to by his former name — in other social situations, will be complemented by a mermaid cookie at Starbucks’ stores.

In addressing the significance of using trans’ people’s correct names and pronouns according to how they wish to live, Starbucks is unquestionably doing good. An advertising deal is an exchange of capital — and a company that is yet to fully acknowledge its problem with making other marginalised communities feel welcome and yet to correct its dismal record of paying tax in the U.K. is not to be heralded without pause. But: Starbucks’ LGBTQ rights’ record is one of its most persistent, proven sources of social good, establishing the Starbucks Pride Alliance Network in 2007 and covering transition costs for employees in the U.S.; taking this position in the U.K., whose cultural dialogue around trans rights remains largely mired in transphobic, reactionary concerns about “self-ID” that are readily debunked by scientific research, is significant. [Pink News]

And in other news...

• Michelin-starred Mayfair restaurant The Square shut down mid-service after bailiffs seized the Marlon Abela-backed restaurant. Abela, who also owns two-Michelin-starred The Greenhouse and Michelin-starred Umu, has been insolvent since January, with The Greenhouse and Umu’s properties both on the market.
• This week’s London restaurant reviews: Tim Hayward and Jimi Famurewa adore Mei Mei in Borough Market, while Jay Rayner slams Great Scotland Yard’s restaurant by Robin Gill, the chef-restaurateur behind Clapham’s The Dairy and Sorella and Darby’s in Nine Elms.
• Yotam Ottolenghi gets the satire treatment and it’s actually pretty good.
• Ealing’s restaurant scene is more exciting than ever.
• Jacu, a Brazilian-inspired cafe in Westminster, is getting into British media’s favourite crosshair: expensive coffee! A £30 cup — with beans excreted by the bird whose name the cafe borrows — plays a range of Lavazza roasts, with the cafe only serving it as espresso for fear all other methods would “ruin” it. A coffee ruined by being filtered? Not heard that one before. [The Times]
• Another festival is putting food and drink before the tunes: Bigfoot has tapped Silo’s Doug McMaster, Matt Orlando of Copenhagen restaurant Amass, and Shoreditch restaurant Two Lights’ Chase Lovecky to “headline.” [Big Hospitality]
• Good tweet: