Monday, October 6th, 2008
7:14 PM on July 1st, 2008
Burnt, Er, "Bold" Coffee To Be Less Ubiquitous Next Year.
Uh oh! Despite all those efforts (and dollars spent) by Starbucks to retool their image and serve better Joe, the coffee behemoth is still hurting. A lot. The company plans to close more than 600 stores and to slash its workforce by 7%, reports the Wall Street Journal today. For those of you keeping count, that's 500 more stores than they'd originally planned to close.
Yikes.
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I often wonder if mass closings like this are part of a rebranding effort. A chance to contract the image a little bit, recreate the demand, then expand again? Maybe to appear smaller and more of a "core" coffee shop? I have no idea.
In 2005 there were 74 starbucks in Portland, Oregon. Closing 600 is a lot, but not ridiculously so.
—matteo
15:37, July 2nd, 2008
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