Cash registers are malfunctioning at Starbucks so the chain is serving customers for free

Reuters

The stores remain open and, according to a statement from Starbucks, customers are still being served.

The company says it is aware of the outage affecting its point-of-sale registers, but says its stores will remain open in the meantime. Here is the company's full statement:

We are aware of the point of sale register outage at company-operated Starbucks stores in the U.S. and Canada.   We are actively working to resolve the outage and our stores will remain open and continue to serve our customers.  The outage was caused by a failure during a daily system refresh.  We apologize to our customers for any inconvenience or confusion and will update this statement once systems are back online. This outage also affects our Evolution Fresh and Teavana stores.

It's not entirely unusual for Starbucks locations to keep the doors open when service equipment goes down. It has been known to offer discounts and other giveaways on such occasions.

Here's a look at how the outage is playing out on social media: