Starbucks customers can give Charlie Kirk’s name when they order, company says
If you order a Mint Majesty tea with two honeys at Starbucks and give Charlie Kirk’s name, as some people are reportedly doing, you shouldn’t expect pushback at the register.
The Washington-based coffee giant Starbucks has clarified that when a customer wants to use a name other than their own on an order, including Kirk’s name, “we aim to respect their preference.”
The company’s clarification came “in response to online discussion about our policy for customer names on orders,” Starbucks said in a Sept. 17 statement.
It also followed some apparent controversy linked to Kirk, the conservative activist who was fatally shot Sept. 10 while speaking at Utah Valley University.
Kirk reportedly had a specific Starbucks tea order.
A recent TikTok video purported to show a barista balking at writing Kirk’s name on an order at a customer’s request, according to reports by Business Insider and Fox News.
What is Starbucks’ policy about names on orders?
When it comes to the name policy, Starbucks said it’s “a company built on human connection” and that “having a name, rather than a number, attached to a customer order has been a core part of the Starbucks coffeehouse experience for decades.”
Most customers give their own names, Starbucks officials said. “And when a customer wants to use a different name — including the name Charlie Kirk — when ordering their drink in our café,” the company aims to respect that, per the statement.
In some instances over the years, “people have tried to abuse the system” by giving political slogans or “words that are sexually explicit or otherwise offensive,” Starbucks officials said.
The company has “previously provided guidance to our partners to respectfully ask the customer to use a different name when attempting to use political slogans or phrases in place of their name,” officials said.
But it’s “clarifying with our team now that names, on their own, can be used by customers on their café order, as they wish,” per the statement.
Have critical comments been written on Starbucks cups?
In its statement, Starbucks officials also referenced “recent social media posts alleging that critical comments were written on Starbucks cups.”
Company officials didn’t provide any more information about the alleged comments, but said an investigation determined that, “in the cases shared so far, the comments were not written by a Starbucks partner. They appear to have been added after the beverage was handed off, likely by someone else.”
This story was originally published September 18, 2025 at 5:47 PM with the headline "Starbucks customers can give Charlie Kirk’s name when they order, company says."
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