Coffee Company With Salem Fire Department Ties Takes On Starbucks

SALEM, MA — The owners of Battle Grounds Coffee Company in Haverhill said they will donate 50 percent of online sales in July to an organization that supports families of fallen officers as a response to an incident where a group of police officers were asked to leave a Starbucks in Tempe, AZ. Battle Grounds is owned by Dana DeFranco, whose father-in-law is of Salem Firefighter Paul Defranco. Her husband Sal is also nephew to Salem Fire Lt Frank Defranco.

"We saw what happened to the officers in Arizona and the line in the sand was drawn and this is our stance," Dana DeFranco told Boston 25 News, which first reported this story. The company has called in extra workers since it announced the promotion, as a flood of orders have poured in.

"They're going into our nightmares and they do it day after day after day," Sal DeFranco, a Navy SEAL veteran, told Boston 25. "To see them treated like this is just so disheartening."

Starbucks has been under fire after a worker at a store in Tempe, AZ asked six officers to leave because they were making a customer feel uncomfortable. The company maintains that they were only asked to move out of the line of sight of the customer, who complained several times to store employees.

For more on this story, see Boston 25 News.