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It’s not September without a pumpkin spice latte, and there’s no “PSL” without Starbucks.
But Starbucks, the international coffee chain that popularized September’s epochal beverage, is bolting up hundreds of its locations across the country, including the landmark Courthouse Square location here in Redwood City.
Revered by many as “fancy Starbucks” for its gothic exterior, the coffee shop at 2227 Broadway will fill cups no longer come Sunday. Employees across the country found out about the sudden closure Thursday.
“We’re doing OK,” a partner at Starbucks’ Courthouse Square location said exhaustedly, who chose to remain anonymous due to corporate restrictions on media relations.
The store’s manager, Patricia Puga, declined to comment, citing the same policy.
The abrupt closure comes as a result of the location’s inability to either offer “the physical environment our customers and partners expect,” or to indicate “financial performance,” the chairman and CEO of Starbucks, Brian Niccol, detailed in a press letter Thursday.
What was once a Starbucks Reserve location back in 2016, the upscale Starbucks site on Broadway served premium, single-origin coffees for years, until it was downgraded to a regular Starbucks during the COVID-19 pandemic.
“I used to work at a Reserve Starbucks in Redwood City and it’s now a sad shell of what it used to be!” a former employee posted on Reddit two years ago. “There used to be 10-15 people working at all times.”
The decline has since continued, as only a few employees worked behind the counter Friday morning, with one admitting to the Pulse that they’re “understaffed.”
The sudden shut down of this Starbucks location has patrons reeling. A replenishing throng of coffee-goers crowded the closure sign at the store Friday morning, which states “this isn’t just any store.”
The 8.5-by-11-inch print-out includes an apology on behalf of “The Starbucks Coffee Company,” and characterizes this specific shop as “your coffeehouse, a place woven into your daily rhythm, where memories were made and where meaningful connections with our partners grew over the years.”
Some disgruntled customers have spilled the beans on the closure to their communities, like Rashida Hutchins.
A San Mateo County employee who works close to that Starbucks location, Hutchins said she’s “disappointed” about the shutdown, not just because of the convenience of the location, but because she loves the mobile order pick-up feature.
While the human services program policy analyst for the county said she’s open to trying a nearby Argentinian coffee joint, Baires Bakery & Café, she fears that the time it’d take to order from a quaint coffee shop during her 15-minute breaks might be prohibitive. She snapped a picture of the sign outside of Starbucks and sent it to her colleague to say, “Oh no! our Starbucks is gonna be closing.”
Unfortunately, Baires Bakery & Café is no longer in service.
Another downtown Redwood City worker, Hailey Ponce, said she was “shocked” when she saw the sign. Ponce was aware that other Starbucks locations were closing but said she didn’t realize it would be “our Reserve.”
While the Starbucks by Courthouse Square is no longer technically a Reserve site, she considers it to be “the nicest” of the nearby locations. Two other Starbucks’ exist about a mile from the heart of downtown and are not expected to bolt up anytime soon.
A Starbucks Brand Reputation and Crisis Communications manager at Starbucks, Sam Jefferies, told the Pulse that he doesn’t have “specifics” on other locations that will be closing starting this weekend. However, he confirmed that such stores will have “signage up and an e-mail to notify customers.”
A public Google sheet has over 500 entries marking likely closures as of Friday morning.
Including the numerous coffeehouses Starbucks has opened in North America this last year, the overall company-operated count of shops will fall by about 1% for the 2025 fiscal year. The plan is to end the year with 18,300 Starbucks locations across the U.S. and Canada. Over the next 12 months, the company plans to elevate over 1,000 of its locations to add “greater texture, warmth, and layered design,” the CEO explained in his letter.
“Exceptional customer service” is among the other intentions of this change, which aligns with the company’s Back to Starbucks enhancement initiative, announced last September.
Of the thousands of Starbucks employees impacted by these sudden closures, Starbucks intends to transfer many to nearby locations “where possible” and “help partners understand what opportunities might be available to them.”
For those they can’t place, the Starbucks team intends to provide severance packages and to welcome them back in the future when new coffeehouses open and staff needs increase. Several Redwood City Starbucks employees are already blazing the #OpenToWork banner on their LinkedIn profiles.
Editor’s Note: This article has been updated to include that Baires Bakery & Café is no longer in service.
Baires Bakery & Café, mentioned in this article, shut down months ago! But I think there’s another coffee shop that’s going to open in that location – hopefully it fares better.