Starbucks Closing 600 Stores in US

Starbucks closing 600 stores in the US: Financial News - Yahoo! Finance

Tuesday July 1, 4:26 pm ET
Starbucks closing 600 underperforming stores in the United States

SEATTLE (AP) -- Starbucks Corp. has announced it's closing 600 underperforming stores in the United States.

The Seattle-based premium coffee company also announced Tuesday it expects to open fewer than 200 new company-operated stores in the United States in fiscal 2009.

The company says it will try to place workers from closed stores in remaining Starbucks.

I wonder how many OKC will lose?

Here is the link to the actual press release from Starbucks

That's less than a tenth of total locations. Here's an interesting blog entry from a few years ago about Starbucks saturation.

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Here's an interesting read by Joe Nocera. Keep in mind he wrote this for the New York Times in January of this year.

This piece is actually from the International Herald Tribune - which is owned by the NYT and is now called "Global Edition of The New York Times" on the masthead.


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An open letter to the founder of Starbucks

By Joe Nocera

Saturday, January 12, 2008


To: Howard Schultz

From: Joe Nocera

Re: Your, er, return

Dear Howard,

It's been almost a year since you wrote that now-famous memo to your executive staff: the one in which you bemoaned what you called "the watering down of the Starbucks experience." The one where you defended each individual decision that had led to that diminished experience - like the switch to automated espresso machines - yet still urged your staff to find a way to recapture the "romance and theater."

Starbucks stores, you wrote, "no longer have the soul of the past and reflect a chain of stores vs. the warm feeling of a neighborhood store." As a hard-core Starbucks customer, I couldn't have agreed more.

What has happened since then? In 2007, Starbucks expanded by an astonishing 1,700 stores - hardly the path a company takes if it's serious about recapturing its "soul." You're now up to 15,000 stores, and from what I read (alas, I couldn't get you on the telephone this week), you still think you can someday get to 40,000 stores - a number that no one, not even McDonald's, has ever come close to. How do you train enough people to staff 40,000 stores? How do you maintain quality? How do you keep your 40,000 stores from becoming just another nondescript chain?

The rest........
An open letter to the founder of Starbucks - International Herald Tribune

So, according to this editorial.....Starbucks opened 1,700 stores in 2007 alone. By closing 600 of them, they only expanded by 1,100 stores in 2007!!
That puts the closing in perspective.

It's hard to feel too sorry for Starbucks. Maybe they will close one of the three within a couple of miles of each other on NW Highway, which always seemed ridiculously redundant to me.

Did you check out the link in BornHere's post? The guy that wrote that blog post has 43 Starbucks within a five-mile-radius of his apartment!

In the "open Letter" from the business columnist at the New York Times (above) he writes that Starbucks, with 15,000 stores, was still insisting they were shooting for 40,000 stores. Seems the columnist was right on the money concerning mismanagement. Makes you wonder if closing 600 is nearly enough.

I wonder if the one they started building at Penn & 23rd is not going to happen. It's the exact building style as the ones in Shawnee and Stillwater (not surprising w/ this one's proximity to OCU), but after completing the structure, they have held off on doing any interior work.

Good location right next to Farmers though...Lots of people that can afford their wares there.

Yeah. Lots of workers in the area, as well as students at OCU.

What do you call the closing of 600 Starbucks stores?

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A good start!

Starbucks has obviously gone overboard in building stores (even here in OKC). Sometimes saturating the market is not always in your best interest. Personally I love Starbucks coffee. It's not something you want to buy everyday, but as more of a 'treat' if you will. I've actually gone to grinding the whole bean at home.
Same great taste, but less hassel and less $$.

low altitude low grade disease resistant robusta blended from crap vietnamese and brazilian macro harvesters have twice the caffeine ...there is nothing good about rampant expansion of "outlets" in an industry that is supposed to be about quality of flavor and freshness....We wonder where diabetes comes from? How about drowning every thing we eat in sugar and salt to mask the awful taste for two generations...The frappucino was invented as the increasing unpalatable quality of mass harvested roasted dead robusta coffee reached it's terminal stage .....the freshness seal is garbage, propaganda, it doesn't work ....would you eat stale bread? support quality and specific personal relationships in business..provide well...go smaller feel better about spending what is so hard to earn...engage..remember the connections between how things become available...and the labor that supports convenience...rise humans..I salute all your intelligences and receptivity to change and i enjoy reading your posts...

woah.

it's like someone tapped into my thoughts from 3 days and put it into one stream of consciousness.

all of this is entirely true and well said. It was worth reposting.

Fresh organic 100% arabica may not be as easy to find. But the taste is worth a few extra drive minutes.

I wont miss them one bit! It seems that I have the same problem that alot of other people are having by literraly being surrounded by Starbucks. I live near May and Memorial and there are 3 within 5 blocks! 3 WITHIN 5 BLOCKS!! (Penn and 122, Penn and Memorial, May and Memorial) I can drink gallons of coffee with the best of them but come on.... I am in the same boat in that I dont feel sorry for them one single bit.

Coffee Slingers has 100% Arabica beans, and they're never sold or served after the 12th day from roast....that's why you feel like you've been infused with the passion of the wind of the plains when you drink it....just damn good

Vintage has 100% organic and fairly traded Arabica beans for its brewed coffee and espresso.

It tastes so good you may drink a whole lot of it and have to pee, but it doesn't make you windy.

That's great to hear.....I will check Vintage out when I'm up in your neck of the woods....blessings.... rise humans

and hopefully I get a chance to check out the slingers of the coffee.

I started buying Member's Mark 100% Columbian whole beans from Sam's. It's really good! About $13 for 40oz.

Is anyone aware of any Starbucks location that look a little barren; i.e., no CD racks, coffee racks, otherwise limitations on displays and decor, etc? Short of a published list, I understand that this may indicate a foreshadowing of things to come.

Also, 12,000 employees equals an average of 20 employees per store. Does anyone know if each store employs this many workers, or more or less? That is to ask if the proportion of workers is equal to the stores closings; will employees at remaining stores be laid off in addition?

I think the CD's are mostly going away in any event.

The drive-thru stores have more people - on the order of 30 or 35 - I've been told.

I suspect there may be more closing and more layoffs. I've also heard the company is struggling to not cut employee benefits.

In part it may be that the entire "coffee culture" has reached the apogee of its cycle. There is lots of competition for product now with McDonald's and Dunkin and so on. The trick for Starbucks and all the other coffee houses for that matter will be to try and compete for the "culture" segment in my opinion.

I appreciate the information! It certainly doesn't look too cool.