You might need to find a new spot to grab your daily dose of caffeine. Starbucks announced that it is closing more than 200 of its stores nationwide. At least 19 of those stores are in the DMV, and four are in Northern Virginia, the Washington Business Journal reported.
Starbucks CEO Brian Niccol wrote in a September 25 corporate blog post that the company has been “carefully reviewing our North America coffeehouse portfolio.” He said that, “During the review, we identified coffeehouses where we’re unable to create the physical environment our customers and partners expect, or where we don’t see a path to financial performance, and these locations will be closed.”
The closed NoVA locations include:
- 100 S. Union St., Alexandria
- 4000 Wilson Blvd., Arlington
- 901 N. Stuart St., Arlington
- 12599 Fair Lakes Cir., Fairfax
Niccol said that Starbucks is working to transfer employees from these stores to other nearby locations. And that the company has also made “the difficult decision to eliminate approximately 900 current non-retail partner roles and close many open positions.”
After accounting for new store openings this year, plus these closures, Niccol said the company’s North America footprint declined by about 1 percent. It will end the fiscal year with nearly 18,300 locations in U.S. and Canada, and plans to “uplift more than 1,000 locations to introduce greater texture, warmth, and layered design.”
Feature image, boyloso/stock.adobe.com