Starbucks: Location closures and elimination of roles

Heh, we had one that was very popular for university students to work at and they did successfully unionize. The thing with university students, though, is that they’re not going to be around forever… so the store experienced pretty much complete staff turnover every few years. This store would perpetually end up in weird situations like not being allowed to make coffee because the supervisor had a family emergency and had to leave. The staff could serve cold drinks and snacks but the union regulations required a supervisor to be on-site if there was any risk of burns.

None of the people who had done the original push to unionize were still around. They had been students, graduated, and moved on. Eventually the staff got frustrated enough with their own union rules that they successfully voted to un-unionize and the store improved a fair bit. Bizarre situation.

toomuchtodo• 10 months ago

As of this comment, 12,000+ baristas at over 650 stores have unionized. The effort continues, and will persist beyond Brian Niccol’s tenure as CEO (and his $95M pay package).

https://sbworkersunited.org/map/

FireBeyond• 10 months ago

Yeah, here, they removed the floor mats, which were intended for the comfort of employees standing for long periods, as a tripping hazard.

But, strangely, it was only considered a tripping hazard at stores that had unionization efforts afoot...

ugh123• 10 months ago

"Second, we’re further reducing non-retail headcount and expenses. This includes the difficult decision to eliminate approximately 900 current non-retail partner roles and close many open positions."

What are the non-retail partners?

mambo_giro• 10 months ago

It’s their term for corporate employees.

lawlessone2• 10 months ago

Is partner here a way of saying employee but without saying employee?

xrd• 10 months ago

I was a GAP employee long ago. That was a "good" job because I saw how the "Associate Managers" barely made more than me, the "Assistant Managers" were stuck at 30, so I spent my lunch hours reading computer science textbooks. I mean "good" job in that it taught me exactly what I never wanted to do long term. I recall they had this management consulting team come in with an acronym "GAP ACT" (Greet, Approach, Product add-on, Accessorize, Close/cashier (?) and then Thank"). I suppose they were right because 30 years later I have not forgotten it, but I do recall quitting when they told me to take a toothbrush and clean the plastic fronts of the jeans racks. What a shitty job, and I bet it is not much better for Starbucks employees.

giraffe_lady• 10 months ago

Yeah pretty much. IIRC they give each employee like one share of stock each year to justify the language.

strongpigeon• 10 months ago

Really surprised about the closing of Starbucks Reserve in Seattle. That place was always bursting at the seams and must have had a major halo effect for the brand. It's hard not to associate the closure with its recent unionization.

YC873498723• 10 months ago

No way! I've been there and had the best tasting coffee and pizza of my life. Surprisingly good combo. And it was right next to the old Living Computer Museum. It was for sure the highlight of my trips to Seattle. :(

shawn_w• 10 months ago

The museum is also gone for good. Thank Paul Allen's estate for not wanting to keep it going or find an organization to take it over.

ethagnawl• 10 months ago

I absolutely believe that the Reserve location in Seattle was busy and can second that those locations had a halo effect for the larger brand.

I've only been to the Reserve location in Midtown Manhattan once and it was very different experience than your run-of-the-mill location. Specifically, I had a drink replaced without asking because the barista said it had "died" while I was in the (nice, clean, great smelling) restroom. Overall, it was just a nice, pleasant experience and I definitely would have frequented that location if I was working in that area regularly. I wonder if this shop was a union one? That might explain why everyone was so pleasant and why it seems to have been closed.

widowlark• 10 months ago

Fortunately we have ample local alternatives in Seattle to pick from

jsbisviewtiful• 10 months ago

Feel bad for those employees. In the last 10 years I've gotten Starbucks maybe twice, both times because we were on the road and needed coffee... and it was the only option. A true fall from grace; The drinks are either sugar bombs or taste burnt and corp loves union busting.

throwfish3000• 10 months ago

They blow it more than half the time when it comes to regular drip coffee.

I still remember my first starbucks visit as a 13 y.o. Sitting down, having a coffee, not knowing what caffeine was, and having the best conversation of my life.

bombcar6• 10 months ago

Sometimes I think Starbucks is more properly classified as a milkshake joint.

The calories!

betaby• 10 months ago

taste burnt

It was the case since forever ( ~15 years+ ). Starbucks is not a speciality coffee shop. There is nothing wrong with that. One has to acknowledge that high volume coffee shops have to rely on basically burned beans in order to be consistent with the taste.

esseph2• 10 months ago

This

Over roasted coffee averages the flavor across large harvests and sources, and they expect to dump a bunch of sugar in there anyway.

YawningAngel• 10 months ago

Coffee is inherently not a consistent drink. The only brewing methods that don't vary significantly with brewer skill and chance are immersion brews, which aren't broadly used in modern coffee shops. It's surely better to not burn the beans to ash and accept some inconsistency than ruin the drink every time

ecshafer3• 10 months ago

The drinks are either sugar bombs or taste burnt

You can order exactly as much sugar as you want for their drinks. If you order a Cappuccino with milk or a coffee or Americano, there isn't any sugar in any of the drinks.

bombcar6• 10 months ago

Growls in lactose

RyanOD2• 10 months ago

I once saw a publication by a coffee expert (sorry, don't have the link) who said the way to go with Starbucks is to order the lightest roast as it's always the closest to a proper, less-burnt coffee.

I've taken that approach and think it's sound advice.

badc0ffee2• 10 months ago

Try the blonde roast espresso. It doesn't have that over-roasted taste.

jypepin• 10 months ago

It's always funny to me how they are still insisting on customer experience and good coffee house. In the bay area most starbucks have become the burger king of coffee shops: housing of drunk homeless people

HnUser12• 10 months ago

Bay Area isn't rest of US and Canada. Based on my limited experience most of Bay Area looks like that, not just Starbucks.

The Starbucks's near me in Canada are fine. If they get rid of the long line of mobile order people, they'd be pretty fine.

DarkNova62• 10 months ago

I never understood Starbucks. I live in Europe, we have good coffee places everywhere. They are cheaper and serve significantly better coffee. I can't think of anything I ordered from Starbucks that didn't taste artificial.

ausbah2• 10 months ago

i think it’s mostly for american tourists

morkalork• 10 months ago

Which is really sad, when I go to Europe I love trying all the different types of pastries you can get at the coffee shops there. A strudel with an intensely sour filling is not something you will find in North America for example.

quantumwannabe• 10 months ago

It most definitely is not. The vast majority of customers at European Starbucks are locals, not tourists.

mothballed• 10 months ago

The ones in Seattle were solid. Not sure why, but I could never order a coffee from any of the other ones again after that, it seemed like the rest were fake ripoffs.

I think they basically developed a quality brand then just gutted the quality everywhere else to expand and it worked.

Poomba• 10 months ago

For me, I just order a drink when my wife stops by one to order one. I hardly go out of my way to order it myself. Everything from the drinks to the pastries are mediocre

deadbabe3• 10 months ago

I go to Starbucks for the co-working vibes, not the coffee.

When are small coffee shops going to understand, if you have a 1 hour limit on how long I can sit there on my laptop (if you even allow laptops), I’m not going to go to your shop. Coffee doesn’t matter, it’s all the same shit.

Starbucks has never cared if I buy one coffee and then sit there all day.

austinallegro2• 10 months ago

Thank God for coffee shops that impose time limits, lest patrons visiting for a coffee and a sit-down have to walk on by because the hipsters in their bollock-strangling denim, plaid shirts and a Crossley turntable tucked under their arm are already hogging the place.

Top Tip: Easily avoid said sofa-hogging hipsters. Look for the bike rack full of Penny Farthings outside.

Go to a Workday for your 'co-working vibes'. Take your Macbook Air and Crossley portable turntables with you as well.

Sincerely,

All the other coffee shop patrons.

ecshafer3• 10 months ago

I hate going to independent coffee shops and having people hogging tables with laptops. It destroys the vibe of the place.

Yeul2• 10 months ago

Okay this may sound weird but Starbucks was the first place that allowed customers to plug in their phone and laptop chargers and that's what made me go there!

Freedom2• 10 months ago

Coffee doesn’t matter, it’s all the same shit.

I don't think this is categorically true, while many are the same, you can definitely taste the difference between different beans and styles of coffee. A latte is very different to a cold brew, for example! Calling it all the same is very dismissive, and more importantly, inaccurate.

travisd• 10 months ago

Starbucks is airport drink/food for me. Being able to order as I enter the TSA line and pick it up on the way to the gate is unmatched convenience, and the coffee options at airports generally aren't great.

kellyjprice• 10 months ago

Starbucks raised the bar for coffee in the US. In most cities big and small, there's better alternatives now. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Third-wave_coffee

abcd_f2• 10 months ago

Starbucks exploded also because there was a void created by anti-smoking campaigns. People needed a healthier vice and something to do on their smoke breaks - et voilà, Starbucks offered just that.

nine_zeros• 10 months ago

I am in America - I genuinely liked some of their flavors, fast service, and happy demeanor of baristas. It always felt like a familiar nice escape from the grind.

I wrote all that in the past tense because none of the things I liked about starbucks is uniformly available any longer.

gowld• 10 months ago

It's anything but an escape from the grind.

ecshafer3• 10 months ago

In the US specialty coffee shops may be just as expensive or more expensive than Starbucks. Starbucks doesn't make good coffee, however they're main competitors in the US are basically Dunkin Donuts, McDonalds, or various regional/local chains. So they are often better than the competitors, since Dunkin Donuts is not as consistent of quality, and McDonalds isn't really a cafe (despite being one of the largest coffee sellers). A lot of local places also close at like 2 or 3 pm, so if I want to grab a coffee at 3 pm, or meet a friend I don't have a ton of options.

I don't really like Starbucks, but I feel a need to defend them that they have earned their success in ways other than marketing.

thewebguyd• 10 months ago

In the US specialty coffee shops may be just as expensive or more expensive than Starbucks.

That was the case where I live for the longest time. Starbucks wasn't great, but it was a pretty big step above McDonalds and the others, and the local shops, while great, were way more expensive than Starbucks.

But now that's no longer the case, really. Plenty of local, really good coffee shops here that are now the similar pricing to Starbucks now that Starbucks has been consistently jacking up prices. Starbucks has no right to be asking $15+ for a triple shot 20oz drink when I can get a much better tasting one for the same price at the local shop across the street.

Where Starbucks still won was availability and consistency. They are literally everywhere, open later, and the recipes are so formulaic now that I know exactly what I'm getting no matter which shop I go to.

They do need to go back down in price though and settle back into that happy middle place.

klik99• 10 months ago

I agree the coffee at starbucks isn't great, but I feel the coffee at dunkin and mcdonalds are both better than starbucks. I like black coffee though, and Starbucks drip or americano just isn't good - I see starbucks more as a desert place than a coffee place, and judged on that they're good. I think more people want sweet milky coffees, and that's fine. That plus the environment is a big pull of Starbucks. It's not my thing, but I get why people like it

EDIT Also, I'm pretty sure the better coffee at mcdonalds happened after starbucks, IIRC they put a lot of effort into improving their offering after starbucks exploded

angmarsbane• 10 months ago

The closing at 2-3 PM drives me nuts.

burnt-resistor2• 10 months ago

In the US specialty coffee shops may be just as expensive or more expensive than Starbucks.

Coffee of, for, and by hipsters. ;O) More power to people who want to take 3 hours to make a cup of coffee like it's a Japanese tea ceremony.

kimfc• 10 months ago

at least in america I think it’s a consumer comfort thing. Like no matter where you are you can get close to the exact same sugar-coffee-cream-drink-thing at any starbucks on the continent, and it’s not really about having actually good coffee (their drip coffee is actually terrible).

But everywhere Ive lived (rural New England and now Seattle) there has always been cheaper better coffee available at local shops. It seems that people who like starbucks and people who are into coffee are consumer groups with little crossover

mips_avatar• 10 months ago

This has changed, it used to be that Starbucks was the only decent coffee in most towns. The thing is there's now so many coffee enthusiasts who grew up in the third wave of coffee that you can easily start and staff a great local coffee shop

danudey• 10 months ago

I live in Canada and the main reason I like Starbucks is that its consistent. It's not great coffee or great pastries or great whatever else, but it's always the same.

We have other chains here, like Blenz, which are franchised rather than corporate, and the quality is hit or miss. I went to a Blenz location once and got a drink far better than anything else I've had in the city, but most of the time I go there I get something mediocre and poorly-made.

Meanwhile, every latte I get from a Starbucks comes out of an automated espresso machine but it comes out pretty much the same every time. The pastries are all pre-packaged and made at some industrial kitchen probably not even in the same time zone, but, again, they're the same every time. And especially when my son was a baby, my wife and I got into the habit of going to Starbucks very frequently because it was one of the only retail anything that always had changing tables in the bathroom, and, if they had gendered washrooms, always had a changing table in the men's room as well. Every other place was hit or miss, and it didn't take long before I got tired of changing my son on (a changing mat on) a filthy bathroom floor.

Back to drinks, though, there are a lot of other small, independent cafes around, and smaller chains like Artigiano which give you better coffee (or pastries or tea or ...), but they're a lot less commonly found.

Now, all that being said, I would kick a (picture of) a puppy if I could get a Te & Kaffi location in Vancouver; the instant I walked into one for the first time in Iceland it reminded me why I originally liked working in a cafe in my twenties - it felt cozy, comfortable, and it smelled deliciously of fresh coffee. It's a lot rarer to get that here for some reason.

jzebedee• 10 months ago

Interestingly, this was the marketing behind Koala Kare's rise to a monopoly over the bathroom baby changing station:

Business owners just couldn’t see the use case for changing stations. Hilger says he was trying to sell the device to “men in their 50s who never changed a diaper in their life.”
A new brochure — this one depicting a woman on her hands and knees changing her baby’s diaper on a disgusting bathroom floor– did the trick. “We had to make them feel guilty,” Hilger says.

https://fortune.com/2014/08/13/koala-baby-changing-station/

brailsafe2• 10 months ago

Vancouver has a great coffee scene, better than most cities imo in terms of spread of types, prices, availability. A recent one I've been liking lately is Doe Roasters on Hastings, but Moja and JJBean are great too between $3-6 CAD for good filter coffee, presumably a bit more for espresso-based drinks.

keiferski• 10 months ago

Starbucks is pretty popular in Europe, even in places with better coffee. That’s because it’s better thought of as a combination between energy drinks and dessert, not a competitor to third-wave coffee shops or espresso bars. The vast, vast majority of their customers are not buying black coffee.

paxys• 10 months ago

In the US Starbucks is almost always the cheapest option in the area for decent coffee.

bombcar6• 10 months ago

Upscale gas station coffee has improve tremendously in the last ten years

jayd16• 10 months ago

They have passable coffee but I think they actually did a good job of curating a good place to simply be.

They served as a pub, in the public house sense, for young professionals.

I think covid really derailed that and the vibe never quite returned. I'm not sure what people are using for a 'third place' (not home or work) these days but Starbucks is out of fashion and sometimes generally hostile to customer loitering now.

o_nate2• 10 months ago

Two of the three Starbucks locations in my home town removed all of the seating. Across the street from one of them, an independent coffee shop opened up with lots of seating. Whenever I walk by the Starbucks is empty and there are a lot of people inside the independent shop. I have to wonder about their strategy.

jorisboris• 10 months ago

Its not for the coffee

They are not hostile to laptops, and overall they have a well-thought out vibe with convenient seating and electricity plugs everywhere

tim333• 10 months ago

I used to hang out there a lot due to laptop friendliness and the like. There are so many competing places for that now though.

tetris112• 10 months ago

Exactly. People go to Starbucks for the WiFi and the juice

RyanOD2• 10 months ago

It has always seemed to me that Starbucks has one thing going for it - consistency.

I used to go into smaller coffee shops and it was a 50/50 gamble that I was going to get terrible coffee (though more recently, I've had better luck). At least with Starbucks I knew I was going to get average coffee every single time.

That being said, I make 95% of my coffee at home.

rdtsc2• 10 months ago

It has always seemed to me that Starbucks has one thing going for it - consistency.

Absolutely. That's why end up going there when I travel and just need to get something quick. I may find a better coffee shop if I have time, or if I wing it, I may end up with some burnt horrible coffee and undercooked sausage (happened before) so I'll just opt to pay more to get the consistency. At home I just brew my own coffee as well.

projectazorian• 10 months ago

Yeah, I never go to Starbucks at home, but frequently do on the road. Much of this country is still a wasteland when it comes to good coffee and Starbucks reliably has adequate quality coffee and clean bathrooms.

rdtsc2• 10 months ago

I never understood Starbucks

It's the McDonalds of coffee. There are lot of better restaurants than McDonalads for sure but a random restaurant could also be worse. So McDonalds provides some low common denominator consistency. Same with Starbucks, coffee may not be the best and sandwiches are so so, but you know what you're getting there.

I find myself there when I travel to another city and need to grab something on the go. I could sit down and start researching local coffee shops if I have time, but if don't, I can pop in and out of Starbucks and know exactly what I'll get.

tetris112• 10 months ago

Off topic, but McDonalds actually serves better and cheaper coffee..

heymijo• 10 months ago

Our car culture in the U.S. means drive thrus can capture a significant portion of sales. Starbucks/Dunkin/McDonald’s do that.

It’s very rare to find a local coffee shop in the U.S. with a drive-thru.

wk_end2• 10 months ago

Depends on where you are in the US. Here in the PNW it’s common - including ones where, oddly, the baristas are all young women in bikinis.

Yeul2• 10 months ago

Starbucks was a novelty in the Netherlands of the mid 90s but Dutch people are masters in assimilating and adapting foreign ideas and there are several competing chains now.

cedws• 10 months ago

I went to Starbucks a lot in Japan because they have a lot of nice non-coffee drinks and have fast + reliable WiFi. A lot of young people go there to work and study too so I didn’t feel out of place.

burnt-resistor2• 10 months ago

It's not about the coffee because it's a lifestyle brand that sells pseudo-prestige to the pseudo-affluent. It's overpriced and a marginal product.

abcd_f2• 10 months ago

Starbucks Reserves are quite impressive though.

I've been to one in Milan, in the old postoffice building right smack in the middle of the city and it has an astounding selection of coffee styles and very cool ambiance [1].

But, yeah, I agree that regular shops are underwhelming and overpriced by local European norms.

[1] https://www.roastery.starbucks.it/

DarkNova62• 10 months ago

Never knew that was a thing, looks nice!

verzali• 10 months ago

The coffee is bad but they don't complain if I sit there and work for six hours. I usually see the price as paying for that, not the coffee. Though I do prefer good local coffee shops when I find them, but I feel bad about taking up a table for hours without paying much.

mostlysimilar• 10 months ago

CEO makes $95 million dollars a year by the way.

techietim• 10 months ago

How much should he make?

ProjectArcturis• 10 months ago

Maybe 1/100th of that?

supertrope• 10 months ago

Maybe put it to a shareholder vote for approval instead of having a board of directors compensation committee rubber stamp.

jihadjihad• 10 months ago

Imagine logging into Gusto etc. and seeing $3,958,333.33 under Gross Pay for 10 business days of work.

numa7numa72• 10 months ago

You could max your 401k real quick.

brk• 10 months ago

This corporate word substitution bullshit really needs to die. Nobody on the receiving end of this is a "partner". Partner implies some amount of equality in things, a voice, a considered opinion. The people being cut almost certainly did not want to be cut, and I would wager none of them were asked for their input.

Zero "partners" are impacted by this. The people impacted are employees.

Also, Starbucks do not operate "coffee houses", they're coffee stores at best, or even just "retail locations".

andrewmcwatters• 10 months ago

I have noticed for well over a decade or more, perhaps 20 years or longer, really, I'm not sure when it started, but companies are reluctant to call people "employees."

Edit: I'm too young for this, but it's along the lines of Personnel from the '60s becoming Human Resources in the '70s and '80s, and Human Resources from the '90s and '00s now becoming People Operations in the '10s and '20s.

I suspect in the '30s it'll change again. Maybe one day there will be a culture change towards boring and we'll just call people "customers," "employees," and the departments responsible for hiring the "Hiring Department."

And people will get mad about that, too, because the HD will be responsible for the paperwork required to fire people, too.

McAlpine5892• 10 months ago

This pains me so. Every time I have to hear "individual contributor", "leadership", or "the brand" I die a little inside.

Please just call me an employee or engineer. As for "leadership", I am somewhat convinced that the word "management" would lead to a mid-life crisis. Such inflated egos. As for "the brand", they are my employer.

This Newspeak has benefits though. Mainly that it hides in plain sight the top-down hierarchy of power that exists. Despite that fact that some employees are on food stamps while others make millions, it _sounds_ like everyone is on on somewhat equal footing.

orsenthil2• 10 months ago

Real Deal here is.

Store Closures:

North America coffeehouse count will decline by about 1% in fiscal year 2025 Will end with nearly 18,300 total Starbucks locations (company operated and licensed) across US and Canada

Staff Reductions:

Approximately 900 non-retail partner roles eliminated Additional open non-retail positions closed Store employees (partners) at closing locations will be offered transfers where possible, or severance packages if transfers aren't available

Who's affected:

Non-retail partners (corporate/support roles) - notified Friday morning Retail partners at closing coffeehouses - notified during the week of the announcement

orsenthil2• 10 months ago

TLDR

Starbucks is closing about 1% of its North American stores due to poor performance or unsuitable locations. The company is eliminating approximately 900 corporate/office jobs and closing many open positions in support roles. Store employees at closing locations will be offered transfers to other stores when possible, or severance packages if no transfers are available.

sota_pop• 10 months ago

Weren’t they just celebrating record profits and patting themselves on the back about the profitability of their clever new giftcard/digital payments program a couple of years ago?

numa7numa72• 10 months ago

Does any one go to S-bux for the 'elevated experience'?

Or do we go for our 1200 calorie 'coffee' milkshake on the way to work every morning?

Starbucks: Location closures and elimination of roles

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