Starbucks: Location closures and elimination of roles | Hacker News Reader

Starbucks: Location closures and elimination of roles

about.starbucks.com

66 pointsChrisArchitect115 comments

"Each year, we open and close coffeehouses for a variety of reasons"

Wonder how many of these are being closed because they've unionized?

attempted to unionize -- they are known for nipping that one in the bud. Happened to one of the locations in my town.

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.

Why didn’t they just change the rules?

“Having a supervisor around” isn’t necessarily a requirement from the union.

From what I understand talking to the staff, it was because none of the staff (at the time, who weren't part of the original unionization push) actually cared enough about the union to do all of the union stuff (like going through the CBA finely and and renegotiating the rules, regular meetings, shop stewards, all of that). They all had a mentality of "this is a coffee shop I'm going to work at for a year or two, not something that I want to put any extra time into beyond the shifts I need to work to pay my way through school"

Edit: If I'm remembering right, the thing that finally sealed the deal for them was that Starbucks corporate was offering better benefits to the entire company than the union (which was made up of like 10 people) had negotiated for themselves.

> Starbucks corporate was offering better benefits to the entire company than the union (which was made up of like 10 people) had negotiated for themselves.

This was union-busting by Starbucks. The union was more than happy to accept the better benefits, but Starbucks corporate refused to negotiate with them to update their contract. Starbucks was acting in bad faith to undermine the union the workers had organized for themselves.

Starbucks told them it was because the union

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/

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...

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.

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.

> 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.

> a triple shot 20oz drink

This isn’t something any coffee shop should be serving. It’s like a big gulp 64 ounce soda, it shouldn’t exist.

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

The Starbucks near me doesn't even brew coffee any more. They switched to these automatic machines that "brew" a cup in about 15 seconds (ie. vending machine quality). Its undrinkable now. In future would only order espresso drinks or cold brew.

The SB blonde roast is a lot better than Dunkin or McDonalds, in my opinion.

agreed, but it's only ever brewed until like 11am because they've weirdly associated it with the morning

> 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.

The closing at 2-3 PM drives me nuts.

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.

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.

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.

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/

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.

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

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

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.

> 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.

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

I agree, the last road trip I went on, where I clocked around 1700 miles, I actuality prefer going to a McDonald over SB to get a large coffee. Cheaper and tastes less burnt for a drip.

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.

It's anything but an escape from the grind.

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

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.

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.

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/

Never knew that was a thing, looks nice!

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.

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.

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.

"The baristas are all young women in bikinis"? what coffees shops are you going to in the PNW?

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bikini_barista

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.

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

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.

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

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.

> 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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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

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

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

I agree, I went on a road trip recently and drank a lot of coffee on the road. a lot of it was from McDonalds, but I was pleasantly surprised how all the machines at the gas stations were freshly brewed coffee at the push of a button. I would have never conceived that gas stations would one day have consistently decent coffee 10 years ago.

I think it's a combination of gas stations realizing that they need to "upscale and branch out" because eventually at some point cars won't be going to them as often, and major advancements (e.g., getting cheaper) for robotic machines that can make coffee.

We're a long way from a five gallon jug of coffee that hasn't been cleaned out since 1982.

i think it’s mostly for american tourists

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.

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

that is indeed sad

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.

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!

> 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.

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

The vibe of a coffee shop now just is one guy and a craptop hogging a table for four.

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.

I don’t get it, if you go to a coffee shop for the coffee, why wouldn’t you just get your coffee and go? You’re complaining that other people are sitting… because you also want to sit? What else are you going to do? Sit and scroll through your phone?

As opposed to sitting on an overpriced laptop all day taking up space other people might want to use as well as costing a business time and money in lost custom so you can spend the day treating the coffee shop like rented office space?

What about patrons with disabilities? Patrons that might want to use the coffee shop to meet someone and talk to them and socialise?

If you want to use a coffee shop as a work hub either a) go to the office, b) work from home or c) go rent office space or visit a work hub.

Some people...

The funny thing is I’ve never seen a Starbucks so packed that there is no where to sit if you just want to drink coffee and scroll on your phone or talk to someone.

And yet, there’s definitely times where there’s too many people to find a good place to sit and work for a few hours.

Starbucks understands this tension and seems to create sitting areas that are designed for both types of individuals.

Unlike indie coffeeshops which have the same kind of seating for every customer and says fuck you to remote workers if they linger too long.

This is why I just keep going to Starbucks. It’s a rare example of a big corp being less hostile to customers than equivalent small businesses.

The Starbucks in Yucca Valley and TwentyNine Palms, CA both are often without available seating due to people on laptops not spending money. At least that was true when I was in the area a couple years ago.

Are you commenting from 2008?

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.

> 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.

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

Not at all - consistency is what they sell. It's like going to Japan from the US and eating McDonalds. Or eating McDonalds in Mexico. Same food, more or less.

This

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

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.

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.

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

The calories!

Yeah, every generation seems to reinvent the malt shop in America.

The next iteration might be whoever builds the Starbucks of boba tea.

Gong Cha? Chatime? Here in Canada both of those seem to be expanding rapidly.

> 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.

Growls in lactose

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

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

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

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.

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?

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

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

You could max your 401k real quick.

How much should he make?

Maybe 1/100th of that?

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

If estimates are right he makes 2-3 cents per coffee sold.

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".

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.

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.

"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?

It’s their term for corporate employees.

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

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.

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

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?

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.

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.

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. :(

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.

Fortunately we have ample local alternatives in Seattle to pick from

dupe: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45375444

is it? or is this the actual source.

Title was: Message from Brian: An Important Update

Dismantle unions as they are dangerous for our profits is the message !

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.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com