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Two Charlotte-based Smoothie King franchises are trying to smooth out claims of being racist after customers claimed their receipts contained racial slurs.
—Sagging Pants Law: Black men make up 96% of town’s arrests for the offense—
On Sunday, a customer posted a picture of a receipt on social media with the n-word after ordering a beverage from the Mt. Holly-Huntersville Road location.
“Aunt just wanted a smoothie! This is ridiculous and sick…” the person captioned the post.
And another similar situation reportedly happened at their Davis Lake Smoothie King location, WBTV reported.
“Today, two instances happened in our Charlotte franchise stores that are totally unacceptable and go against every value that we stand for,” said Smoothie King CEO Wan Kim wrote in response to a news station’s inquiry.
“Two of our team members wrote inappropriate, racial remarks about our guests.”
By Monday, yet another racist claim arose on Facebook after a third person said they too experienced discrimination.
“I was just in this Smoothie King with my kids. Instead of asking for my name. Zack H. thought it would be funny to put ‘Jackie Chan’ as my name,” Tony Choi posted.
“Being Korean, I find this very insulting. But the 3 employees working there at the time couldn’t stop laughing about it.”
—White woman who confronted Black couple at gunpoint for having picnic faces criminal charges—
Smoothie King tried to address the claims saying:
“Today, two instances happened in our Charlotte franchise stores that are totally unacceptable and go against every value that we stand for. Two of our team members wrote inappropriate, racial remarks about our guests. We have zero tolerance for any action where a guest is disrespected, and we have taken immediate and decisive action. As of tonight, both team members involved have been terminated. Both stores will be closed until the franchisees and their respective teams complete further training on our standards and to ensure that nothing like this occurs again. Additionally, we are continuing our investigation to ensure that any individuals involved in these situations have been terminated. This behavior does not in any way reflect our company’s commitment to creating an open and welcoming environment, and for that we sincerely apologize. Our senior management team is taking additional steps to reinforce and retrain all of our franchisee and store-level employees of our inclusivity policies and best practices.”
Perhaps Smoothie King should follow Sephora’s lead after the beauty mega store came under fire after singer SZA said she was racially profiled while trying to buy Fenty products by security in one of their stores. Sephora closed their 400 stories for one hour today for inclusion training.
Should be interesting to see if 60 minutes of talking brings about real change.
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