Starbucks Corporation (SBUX) plans to permanently close about 400 U.S. stores. The company noted that the locations are primarily underperforming locations in dense urban markets such as New York, Los Angeles, Chicago, San Francisco, and Baltimore. The closures represent a small fraction of the roughly 16,500 to 17,000 Starbucks (SBUX) stores in operation in the U.S. Starbucks (SBUX) plans to add new stores in 2026 in some of the impacted cities.
The trimming of the store base is part of a broader restructuring and “Back to Starbucks” strategy focused on profitability and customer experience. The company is responding to saturated city trade areas, higher operating costs, shifting traffic patterns driven by remote work, and intensifying competition from smaller specialty coffee chains and will try to reassign affected employees to nearby stores.
Shares of Starbucks (SBUX) are down 6.4% on a year-to-date basis. Wall Street analysts have a consensus Buy rating on SBUX, while Seeking Alpha analysts are more cautious.