Aaron

That used to be their whole shtick, the third place experience. They wanted people to treat Starbucks as where they go when they want to relax or meet with friends, a place outside of their home and work, where the baristas knew their names and would chat and make them feel welcome. Especially a lot of older folks liked that, and would make it part of their routine. Starbucks threw that all away when they went to prioritising drive thru and mobile order/pay systems. It’s a shareholder business and this is capitalism. It’s either neverending growth or death.

Absolutely right. It’s not a law for them, it’s a fine.

I’m no expert, but I was under the impression that their tools use not only facial recognition that can (with a non-perfect record) identify people wearing nose and below masks, but also identifies based on cell phone and geographic data. So if someone plans on relying on beating facial recognition, they’ll need to also beat the other tools in use by wearing a full mask, not carry a cell phone, etc.