Every 8 Minutes: How Often Starbucks Is Cleaning US Stores

In a sign of just how seriously the restaurant industry is taking the spread of the coronavirus in America, Starbucks Corp. said staff across its 14,000 U.S. locations are being told to wipe down busy areas of the store ideally every eight minutes.

If that can’t be achieved, stores shouldn’t go more than 30 minutes without being cleaned, Rossann Williams, the chain’s executive vice president of the U.S. company-operated business and Canada, said in a statement on Thursday.

Williams said that the company had learned from the outbreaks across Asia and is bringing some of those measures to America.

U.S. locations have added additional labor to help with cleaning, she said.