Starbucks said it will close about 250 coffeehouses in North America later this week, the latest round of cuts as the company keeps reshaping its store fleet. In a September 24 message to employees, Chief Operating Officer Mike Grams said the closures follow a review of locations that do not fit the customer experience Starbucks wants or do not show a path to acceptable financial performance.
For households, the immediate effect is simple. Some neighborhoods will lose a nearby coffee stop, while workers at affected stores face transfers or severance if they cannot be placed elsewhere. Starbucks has not released a public list of the specific stores.
Starbucks confirmed another 250 closures this week
The company said the planned closures cover about 250 coffeehouses across the United States, Canada and Mexico. Grams said Starbucks “carefully reviewed” its North America coffeehouse portfolio and identified stores where it could not “consistently deliver the experience” it wants for customers and employees, or where it did not see a path to acceptable financial performance.
That 250 store figure represents about 1 percent of the company’s more than 18,000 locations across the three countries, according to Nation’s Restaurant News. The move follows a much larger wave of closures last year. The Associated Press reported that Starbucks closed 627 stores in North America and Europe last September, while Nation’s Restaurant News said the chain closed nearly 600 locations in North America last year alone.
Starbucks framed the decision as part of its broader “Back to Starbucks” strategy under CEO Brian Niccol. A filing with the Securities and Exchange Commission said Starbucks’ board approved further actions under that strategy on September 22. Grams said closing stores is difficult, but the company wants every coffeehouse to be a place customers enjoy and workers are proud to work in.
Shoppers will feel it locally, but the store list is still unknown
The biggest unanswered question for customers is which cafes are on the list. Starbucks has not publicly identified the cities, neighborhoods or shopping centers affected by the roughly 250 closures, so shoppers do not yet have a company-issued map of which stores are leaving.
What is confirmed is the geographic scope. The closures are in North America, meaning the United States, Canada and Mexico. Starbucks Workers United said 20 unionized stores are among the 250 locations slated to close, according to the Associated Press. The union said it requested more information from Starbucks and argued that any unionized store closures should be subject to bargaining.
For workers, Starbucks said it is discussing transition options, including opportunities to transfer to other stores. Grams also said severance will be provided for employees who cannot be placed in another shop. For customers, that means service may shift to nearby cafes rather than disappear entirely in some markets, but Starbucks has not said how many communities will lose their only store.
The closures are tied to Starbucks’ cafe overhaul
Starbucks says the cuts are happening alongside a large renovation push. In a company update published September 23, Starbucks said more than 1,000 coffeehouses across the United States and Canada have already been redesigned. The company also said more “uplifts” are underway in markets including Atlanta, Austin, Dallas, Houston, Miami, Nashville, Orlando, Seattle and Washington, D.C.
Nation’s Restaurant News reported that Starbucks is on track to remodel 1,500 locations by the end of this fiscal year. The company has also been moving away from formats that do not fit its updated in-store vision, including some seatless Pickup stores that cannot be upgraded into the kind of cafe environment it now wants.
For shoppers and home cooks, the practical takeaway is that Starbucks is narrowing its footprint in some places while spending heavily on others. Some customers may lose the fastest or closest option for a takeout coffee run, while others may see remodeled cafes with more seating and a different in-store setup. What Starbucks has confirmed, for now, is the total: about 250 closures later this week.