US coffee chain Starbucks has announced it is to close about 250 coffee shops in North America, the second major round of closures under chief executive Brian Niccol. The outlets represent roughly 1 per cent of the company’s more than 18,000 stores in the region.
In a letter to staff on September 24, chief operating officer Mike Grams said the sites were due to shut by the end of the week. He said they were either failing to deliver acceptable financial results or could not offer the experience the company wanted for customers and employees.
Grams wrote that some outlets “continue to underperform despite the hard work and commitment” of staff. He added that the refurbishment of its coffee shops had given management a clearer picture of how each one was performing.
Starbucks did not say which locations would be affected or how many were in the US. Nor did it disclose how many jobs would go, according to the Associated Press.
The company said it would try to move affected workers, whom it calls “partners”, to other stores. Those it could not place would receive severance support.
It also did not reveal how many of the sites were unionised. More than 700 US Starbucks outlets have voted to join a union since late 2021 but the company opposes the drive and no labour agreement has yet been reached.
The latest cuts come a year after a first wave of closures. In its 2025 financial year, which ended on September 28 that year, Starbucks shut 627 stores and recorded some $892 million (€782 million) in restructuring and impairment charges, according to its annual filing with the US Securities and Exchange Commission.
That round, which also saw 900 non-retail staff laid off, reached Europe too. Niccol told employees at the time that locations in Austria, the UK and Switzerland would close.
The company, which pulled out of Russia in 2022 following the outbreak of the Ukraine war, has continued to trim its corporate structure this year. In May, it announced 300 US corporate job losses and the closure of several regional offices.
Starbucks is targeting gross cost savings of some €1.75 billion by its 2028 financial year as part of Niccol’s “Back to Starbucks” turnaround plan. At the same time, it has been spending on its coffee shops, with Grams saying it expected 1,500 North American outlets to have been refurbished by the end of September.
Grams insisted that Starbucks remained committed to growing its number of stores in North America.
