CHEF’S NOTE: I’m glad I saw this today. I’m in Cleveland and the popular Lounge across the street has that same pest strip under the bar near food and beverage, visible to anyone sitting on the side of the bar. Almost identical to the pictures shown below.
The day after I posted this article, I went across the street and the health department was there. She never checked the end of the bar where this pest strip was hanging. Never even looked.

I’m assuming that the pest strip isn’t designed for pests to walk into it, like a motel, since it’s hanging on a cable. That means that the gases or vapors the strip emits kill the pests in the neighborhood, not by actual contact. It’s awfully close to that open ice machine.
I suspect that food and beverage establishments and manufacturing plants across the country are using those strips and making people sick.
The government needs to get on this immediately. Some of those places they frequent. Maybe that’ll get them to move.
For years STARBUCKS has been cited and for years there was no enforcement. Why wait till thousands of people get pesticide poisoning before forcing compliance?
What, there’s no system in place for forced compliance? And Starbucks’ former CEO is running for president? This doesn’t look good for him nor the upscale chain stores he controlled at every level. Why pay top dollar at a ghetto coffee shop when for half the price you can go to the real ghetto. They’re probably using the same strips there.
I blame the Defense Of Department for not regulating these poisons. They’re all biological weapons. Pest companies are regulated by the DOD. And the DOD is allowing them to mass-poison customers and workers.
Time to end this insanity.
A lawsuit filed today in New York City claims coffee giant Starbucks has been exposing its employees and customers to deadly pesticides for years, despite several warnings from pest control experts.
According to court documents obtained by The Blast, a former Starbucks employee and two pest control workers who serviced Starbucks stores for years claim the company “has for years permitted the deployment of toxic chemicals in its stores, which infused not only the food products and fixtures, but also the very air circulated throughout its retail locations in Manhattan.”
The former workers claim that Starbucks was “provided with no fewer than a dozen different explicit written warnings from external experts in the past three years.” They claim the company “systematically and unlawfully hid these toxic products in their stores for the past several years.”
The lawsuit claims, “Starbucks stores located throughout Manhattan –– from Battery Park to upper Manhattan –– continuously failed to take necessary or adequate measures to ensure their cleanliness and instead recklessly hid hazardous pesticides throughout their stores, including in close proximity to food and food preparation areas.”
Specifically, the lawsuit claims that Starbucks used “Hot Shot No-Pest 2” strips in their stores. The strips contain a toxin called Dichlorvos, which the lawsuit claims is “hazardous to humans.”
The lawsuit claims that the labeling for the strips warns, “Do not use in the food/feed areas or food/feed processing or food/feed manufacturing or food/feed establishments.”
Paul D’Auria — a pest control technician who worked for an outside company that serviced Starbucks stores for years — claims he “discovered that Starbucks management personnel routinely placed numerous sets of DDVP No-Pest Strips within virtually each of the more than 100 stores that he serviced from at least early in 2015 through June 2018, and in multiple locations in each such store.”
D’Auria claims he “routinely photographed many of the No-Pest Strips that he discovered for purposes of documenting and reporting the dangerous misuse of this product which posed an obvious threat to his own health and safety (as he worked in close and unsafe proximity to these DDVP strips) and the health and safety of Starbucks patrons and employees alike (who are also all commonly in close and unsafe proximity to these DDVP strips).”
He claims he found the strips:piled on or around air vents affixed behind the coffee bar piled in heaps along high shelves and ledges under and along countertops in and next to pastry cabinets in employee break areas in out-of-sight areas of near-permanent filth and disrepair…
FINISH UP: Starbucks Sued for Allegedly Exposing Customers and Employees to Deadly Pesticide