NYPD Union Lifts Boycott of Dunkin Donuts After Chain Apologizes

The New York Police Department and Dunkin’ Donuts have been mired in a gnarly conflict that's been brewing since August. It began mere days after two plainclothes officers claimed that a barista working in a Dunkin’ Donuts and Baskin-Robbins location in the Bedford-Stuyvesant neighborhood, Brooklyn refused them service, the justification being that he “doesn't serve cops.”

Michael Palladino, President of the New York Police Department's Detectives’ Endowment Association (the body's labor union), was furious, calling the prejudice that the cops had been subjected to “disgraceful.” Mayor Bill De Blasio, vaguely implicated by Palladino in his response to the chain for fostering a climate wherein it was permissible to hate cops, called the barista's behavior “unacceptable.”

Though the Dunkin' franchise owner apologized to one of the officers personally in early August, Palladino reportedly found this response insufficient. He called on all NYPD officers and their families to boycott the chain entirely. (Neither Dunkin' Donuts nor the DEA has responded to request for comment from MUNCHIES as of writing.)

It was a fierce, principled boycott that raged on for four long months until, as The New York Post reported last week, the chain went the extra mile to formally apologize to the union. The apology took the form of a full-page ad smack dab in The Chief-Leader, a labor newspaper wherein Dunkin’ Donuts Operations Vice President Robert Wiggins ruefully claimed that the initial incident, the catalyst for this conflict, “did not meet our standards of service.” He noted that the chain and its franchises “deeply value the public service that police officers and detectives provide to the neighborhoods we serve.”

In a heartwarming conclusion, Palladino told the Post that the DEA had accepted the chain’s apology. “I encourage both sides to resume the normal friendship and partnership,” he said to the paper.

Well, glad that’s settled.