Aside from its ongoing union problems, there’s more news coming out of Starbucks of late. Of course, with the recent resignation of CEO Kevin Johnson, founder and former CEO Howard Schultz officially took the helm again this week and jumped right into the fray. He hosted a town-hall style open forum for employees at which he talked at some length about ongoing unionization efforts with the company. At the same time, he put an immediate halt to the company stock buyback program opting instead to reinvest those monies into ‘company partners’ (read: employees). One employee who most likely didn’t make it to the open forum however was General Counsel Rachel Gonzalez, who was fired from the post upon Schultz’ return.  In other competitor news, we noted that Tim Hortons announced this week that it was resurrecting its reusable cup program, after a two plus year hiatus due to the coronavirus pandemic. The company said it will also be reintroducing in-restaurant dishware for guests, including mugs, plates and cutlery. Finally, Dutch Bros coffee announced that in 2021, its first year as a publicly traded brand, it had opened a total of 98 stores across its 12-state footprint and opened for the first time in three new states – Texas, Oklahoma and Kansas.