New York — Starbucks, scrambling to restore trust after the arrest of two black patrons at a cafe in Philadelphia, will close more than half its stores in the US next month for an afternoon of bias training. That could set back the company, which booked $22.4bn in revenue last year, a mere $16.7m in lost sales, according to Bloomberg calculations. Starbucks is shutting its so-called company-operated stores temporarily on the afternoon of May 29 — the day after Memorial Day — to train nearly 175,000 employees. It booked $14bn in sales last year across its 9,412 stores in the Americas. So, calculated on a per-store basis, it generated an annual $12.2bn from the 8,222 stores closing their doors for the afternoon in the US. The average per day: roughly $35.5m. On this basis, a half-day shutdown costs it $16.7m. Starbucks doesn’t split out US revenue from the Americas, so Bloomberg’s estimates are on an average per-store basis — and based on figures for fiscal 2017, which ended October 1...
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