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The shops along Washington's busy street, H Street Northeast, are illuminated by names and well-known logos: Petco. Whole foods. CVS.
There is also a Starbucks. Or more precisely, S-T-A-R-B-U-C-K-S enunciated in the hand symbols of American Sign Language.
This finger correction is a way to locate the coffee giant's first American signature store, where 24 employees who are deaf, hard of hearing and hard of hearing manage the store using ASL. The store debuted Tuesday after being converted from a standard Starbucks website to make design and technology more accessible. According to employees and advocates, this is a step towards creating jobs for the deaf while immersing hearing-impaired people in spaces for the deaf. And it's a show of support from one of the world's largest business brands.
"My identity is accepted here," said Crystal Harris, a barista at the autograph shop. "Deafness has many faces."
The store is a few blocks from Gallaudet University, a 150-year-old institution and the only university in the world designed for deaf and hard of hearing students. The store is Starbucks' first signature store, opened in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia, in 2016. Guests on the outside can see "Starbucks" written orthopedically under the main logo and on the large table umbrellas . And inside, what can look like any other Starbucks coffee has been specially laid out and decorated to celebrate the deaf culture.
An entire wall, for example, is covered with a multicolored mural commissioned by a deaf artist and a member of the Gallaudet faculty. On the fingers, the mural depicts a dull "d" representing the deafness, a capital "D" representing the deaf identity, an eye to represent the visual connections, a hand holding a cup of coffee and d & # 39; other symbols showing the fusion of the deaf and auditory cultures.
Customers can communicate in ASL or write their orders on a Tech Pad. Rather than waiting for their names to be called at the end of the bar, customers take a look at a screen indicating when their drinks are ready. The store has also been refurbished to maximize visibility and visibility, such as high tables or large stacks of cups, which limit the visibility of people connecting to each other. Clients who do not sign are also encouraged to use visual cues. For example, instead of signing that the store did not sell chamomile tea, an employee passed his hand on the back of the neck, saying "no," then pointed at the printed menu with other options.
Camille Hymes, Starbucks' regional vice-president for the Mid-Atlantic, said the company chose D.C. for its proximity to Gallaudet and for the city's links with activism for the deaf community. According to Hymes, using the store as a profitable business model, Starbucks can be an example for other companies to "use our balance for good".
Adam Novsam, a public service analyst at Starbucks and a leading member of the deaf society, said he had heard that "the deaf communities around the world wanted to have this space." Even as a Starbucks employee, Novsam said it can be frustrating to go to other Starbucks or cafes and face constant communication barriers. He still has his order typed on his phone, for example, "to accommodate the other person".
The store's manager, Matthew Gilsbach, left the California Bay area for the signature location. At one point during his three and a half years in the business, Gilsbach said he was stunned to meet a deaf district director from Starbucks.
"I thought, wait, there is a deaf district director?" Gilsbach said. "What is going on?"
Any disbelief that a deaf person could assume a leadership or management role is precisely the type of stigma that Starbucks and advocates in the Deaf community seek to fight. Howard Rosenblum, director general of the National Association of the Deaf, said companies can hire deaf employees at lower levels, but that these opportunities rarely extend to the chain.
Some companies are showing signs of progress: Jenny Lay-Flurrie, Accessibility Manager at Microsoft, is deaf and has struggled to improve the accessibility of employees with disabilities. Still, the unemployment and underemployment rate in the deaf community is 70 percent, Rosenblum said.
"The manager is always an auditor because people with hearing loss are perceived as having limited capacity," said Rosenblum.
Not so at H Street Starbucks. The employee Kylie Garcia had just been promoted from barista to shift supervisor. Garcia grew up as the only deaf person in a non-signatory and hearing family, and she knows very well how difficult it is for people who are deaf to find a job. Garcia previously worked at a Starbucks kiosk in a Target store where his only job was to prepare drinks – never interacting with customers and often being excluded from conversations with other baristas.
"People refused to offer me a job because they did not want to take the risk," Garcia said.
Pamela Pipes, an audience barista who is also a sign language interpreter, moved from Raleigh, North Carolina, to work in the DC's autograph shop. Here, "the tables have turned," said Pipes, in which hearing clients will have to understand how to navigate and communicate in deaf spaces.
Sitting in front of her, Harris joked that during the remodeling phases, some customers were still perplexed. Some waited to hear their names at the end of the counter. Another entered and, as if to point out that he wanted a large glass, held his hands in front of him about two feet apart.
The store will continue to gather feedback from customers and employees, and Starbucks could draw the attention of another city to the next store of signings. But this week, Novsam saw a dream come true. Two nights before the opening of Starbucks, Novsam walked down H Street to see the wall mural radiating with yellows, pinks, greens and blues.
"Dynamism has moved me," Novsam said. "It made me stop in my tracks and it made me cry."
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