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| Starbucks store in Yangpyeong, Gyeonggi Province / Courtesy of Starbucks Korea |
By Kim Jae-heun
Starbucks Korea reopened its drive-thru store in Yangpyeong, Gyeonggi Province, Thursday ― a day after the shop closed following a customer there later testing positive for COVID-19.
The company said a man came to the store, about 10 kilometers east of Seoul, Sunday, with his family and stayed there for about 40 minutes. The quarantine authorities determined that nobody else was in close enough contact with him to possibly get infected by the virus.
There were two other people in the coffee shop that quarantine officials thought could have come into contact with him, but they sat three tables away so their chances of being infected were very small.
"The man, as well as his family, all wore face masks and they did not contact anybody at the Starbucks store," an investigator at Yangpyeong County Office said.
On the day the patient visited Yangpyeong store, Starbucks strictly followed the government's guideline to have all customers wear face masks consistently and use hand sanitizer in the venue.
"We've paying extra attention to pandemic preventive measures at our Yangpyeong branch in particular. We check the body temperature of all customers entering the store, which we don't do at other stores," a Starbucks Korea official said.
But he failed to explain how the patient managed to pass the screening at the Yangpyeong branch four days earlier.
"The patient could've been a symptomless carrier," the official added.
The reopening of the Yangpyeong branch is causing some concern as it attracts more than 600 customers a day. Since its grand opening July 24, people have been waiting for hours in long queues every day to experience the country's largest Starbucks store. The Starbucks Korea official said the tables at the Yangpyeong branch are further apart than those in other stores.
It also has no plans to apply any strengthened preventive measures against COVID-19 in the foreseeable future.
"I visited the store last week and it was crowded with a lot of people," said a 49-year-old housewife surnamed Kim. "People came in wearing face masks but they took them off once they found a table to sit and talk. I didn't think the tables were particularly more distanced from one another than those in other Starbucks branches. It didn't look hard for a mass infection to break out if a COVID-19 patient had walked around the venue freely with no face mask on."
The government recently strengthened its guidelines on preventive measures to oblige customers to wear masks at all times except when drinking a beverage. Coffee franchises around the country have been supplying extra hand sanitizers in stores and disinfecting facilities more frequently but these measures may not be so effective.
"We are doing everything we can, but it is hard to prevent the disease 100 percent as people have to take off their masks when drinking or eating in the store," a coffee franchise official said.
