Starbucks silent on store closings

Tuesday, July 8, 2008 – 10:45 AM CDT
Wichita Business Journal – by Wichita Business Journal

Starbucks will begin closing the first of 600 stores this month, but the company is keeping quiet about the locations, including the eight Wichita coffee shops currently open.

Details are still being finalized. Individual stores will be notified by their district manager or regional director about 30 days prior to their anticipated closure, according to Starbucks officials.

The closures are to continue through March 2009.

Starbucks won’t be publishing a full list of the stores “out of respect for our partners,” the company said.

The company announced July 1 that the stores targeted for closure are spread across all major U.S. markets. About 70 percent of them have opened since the beginning of fiscal year 2006. About 100 of the 600 had previously been scheduled to close.

Starbucks (NASDAQ: SBUX) operates about 7,000 U.S. stores and licenses 4,100 more.

The closures will affect up to 12,000 full-time and part-time retail employees, about 7 percent of the Starbucks global workforce. The company will try to give laid-off workers positions at other Starbucks stores.

As part of the corporate restructuring, the Seattle-based coffee giant will open less than 200 new stores in the U.S. in its 2009 fiscal year — down from previously stated guidance of just less than 400 stores a year from fiscal 2009 through fiscal 2011. It is currently building a coffee shop in west Wichita on Central.