Starbucks is shutting another 250 coffeehouses across North America this week, marking the second major wave of store closures under CEO Brian Niccol as the coffee giant pushes ahead with its turnaround strategy.
The closures represent about 1% of Starbucks’ more than 18,000 North American coffeehouses and come roughly one year after the company closed 627 stores across North America and Europe as part of an earlier restructuring.
Why Is Starbucks Closing 250 More Stores?
Starbucks Chief Operating Officer Mike Grams said the company conducted a detailed review of its North American coffeehouse portfolio and identified locations that were either struggling to deliver the customer and employee experience Starbucks wants or did not have a clear path toward acceptable financial performance.
The company announced the closures in a September 24 message to employees, saying approximately 250 coffeehouses would shut later that week.
Starbucks has not publicly released a complete store-by-store list of the locations affected, nor has it disclosed how many of the closures are in the United States versus Canada.
The Closures Come as Starbucks Tries to Reinvent Its Stores
The latest shutdowns are happening alongside a very different part of Starbucks’ turnaround plan: investing heavily in the stores that remain.
Under the company’s “Back to Starbucks” strategy, Starbucks has been redesigning coffeehouses with softer seating, artwork, greenery, local design elements and other changes intended to make stores more comfortable places to spend time.
The company said it had already completed more than 1,000 coffeehouse “uplifts” across the United States and Canada since late 2025 and aims to reach at least 1,500 by the end of fiscal 2026.
That means Starbucks is pursuing two strategies simultaneously: closing locations it considers unable to meet its goals while investing in stores where it sees stronger potential.
What Happens to Starbucks Employees?
The closures will also affect workers at the stores being shut down.
Starbucks said it plans to transfer employees to other locations where possible. Workers who cannot be placed elsewhere are expected to receive severance support.
The company has also been reducing its corporate workforce. Starbucks eliminated another 300 corporate positions in May, following the roughly 900 non-retail job cuts announced during the previous year’s restructuring.
A Costly Move for the Coffee Giant
The new closures are not without a significant financial cost.
Starbucks expects the latest restructuring to generate approximately $300 million in charges, including costs associated with exiting leases, employee separation benefits and the disposal or impairment of coffeehouse assets.
Reuters reported that Starbucks expects most of the closures to be completed by the end of fiscal 2026.
At the same time, the company is scaling back its previous store-opening expectations. Starbucks now expects roughly 440 net new global stores in fiscal 2026, compared with its earlier projection of 600 to 650.
Starbucks Says the Turnaround Is Still Moving Forward
Despite the closures, Starbucks says the broader North American business has been showing improvement.
In its September 24 employee message, the company said North American operations had returned to strong growth, citing faster service, more consistent experiences and warmer coffeehouses.
The company has also pointed to several consecutive quarters of comparable-sales growth as evidence that its turnaround strategy is gaining traction. Reuters reported that customer traffic had increased across income groups, although the company still faces pressure to convert that improvement into stronger profitability.
The contrast is significant: Starbucks is simultaneously reporting improving sales trends while deciding that hundreds of individual locations are not performing well enough to remain open.
The Bigger Strategy Behind the Closures
The latest shutdowns are part of Niccol’s broader effort to reshape Starbucks around its core coffeehouse experience.
Niccol, who became Starbucks chairman and CEO in 2024, has focused on simplifying operations, improving service speed, upgrading stores and making Starbucks locations feel more welcoming as part of the “Back to Starbucks” strategy.
The company’s September 2025 restructuring already involved major store closures and about 900 non-retail job eliminations. Starbucks also said at that time that it intended to invest in store upgrades and customer service.
A year later, the company is continuing that same transformation—only with another 250 stores now being removed from the North American footprint.
What This Means for Starbucks
The latest closures do not signal that Starbucks is abandoning North America.
Instead, the company says it remains committed to growing its North American store base while concentrating investment on locations that can deliver the customer experience and financial performance it expects.
The bigger question is whether the combination of store closures, redesigned coffeehouses and operational changes can turn recent sales momentum into a more sustainable improvement in the business.
For customers, the immediate impact will be straightforward: hundreds of Starbucks locations will disappear, while other stores are being redesigned and upgraded.
For Starbucks, however, the closures represent something larger—a second major test of whether the company’s “Back to Starbucks” strategy can reshape the world’s biggest coffeehouse chain without sacrificing its long-term growth ambitions.
WWC ONE MEDIA G,A
