Stores slated to close named
Starbucks cuts back expansion
Lawrence retailer
The Starbucks at 647 Mass. is not among the 600 stores slated for closing. The 1,400-square-foot store opened in 2001 as the first company-owned retail location in town.
Seattle ? Starbucks Corp. has identified all 600 company-owned stores it plans to close in a bid to boost its business and weed out unprofitable locations.
Targeted are 19 stores in Washington state, including seven in Seattle.
The company announced 50 stores late last week, saying those stores would be closed by the end of July. Those include four stores in Alabama, seven in Minnesota and eight in California.
Now the gourmet coffee retailer is detailing all stores slated for closure.
Including the eight other stores, California will now lose 88 stores with two each in Los Angeles and San Francisco, and 10 in San Diego.
Florida will lose 59 stores, including three each in Tampa and Palm Beach Gardens.
Louisiana will lose 13 stores, nine of them in Baton Rouge.
The company announced earlier this month that it would close 600 company-owned stores in the U.S. starting in July and continuing through the first half of the next fiscal year.
But Starbucks didn’t say which locations would be shut down, until now.
The move to close the stores is a turnabout from Starbucks’ aggressive expansion plans.
But the company curtailed those plans as it saw traffic and its profits decline recently as the faltering economy has led some consumers to question their spending on pricey coffee.