Starbucks announced Thursday it's shuttering approximately 250 locations across the US and Canada by the end of this week — about 1% of its 18,000-store North American footprint.

The company isn't releasing a list of which locations are closing, but customers will start seeing signs on affected stores this weekend, and closures will be reflected in the app as they happen.

"We have carefully reviewed our North America coffeehouse portfolio and identified locations where we do not believe we can consistently deliver the experience we want for customers and partners or where we don't see a path to acceptable financial performance," COO Mike Grams wrote in a letter to employees.

The closures will cost the company about $300 million in restructuring charges — roughly $200 million of that from early lease terminations and employee separation costs.

This Is the Second Time in a Year

This is actually the second round of major closures under CEO Brian Niccol. He made a nearly identical move about a year ago, announcing similar cuts alongside corporate layoffs as part of a broader $1 billion restructuring effort when he first took over. Starbucks had 18,734 North American locations a year ago. After last year's closures, that number dropped to 18,371. This week's cuts push it lower still.

What's changed since then is that Niccol's turnaround plan — called "Back to Starbucks" — is actually working. Same-store sales in the US jumped 7.9% last quarter, beating Wall Street expectations of 5.7% and reversing a 2% decline from the same quarter a year prior. The closures aren't panic — they're precision. The company is cutting stores that aren't benefiting from the turnaround momentum while the rest of the portfolio improves.

What "Back to Starbucks" Actually Changed

Niccol came in two years ago with a specific diagnosis: Starbucks had drifted too far from what made it work. The fixes he's implemented are deliberately old-school — free refills on drinks enjoyed inside the coffeehouse, the return of the condiment bar, a simplified menu, better in-person service, renovated interiors with more seating, and a stricter code of conduct to address the issues that had been making some stores feel unsafe or inhospitable.

By the end of fiscal 2026, the company will have completed at least 1,500 store "uplifts" — physical renovations designed to bring those cafes back to the experience standard — with more planned for 2027.

The stores closing this week are the ones that couldn't be rescued by those improvements, or where the real estate and market conditions make recovery unlikely regardless of what happens inside.

Growth Is Still the Plan

Starbucks was projecting 600 to 650 new store openings globally this fiscal year. That number has been revised down to 440, mostly because the closures shifted the math. Growth is still happening — just at a slightly slower pace than originally planned, and concentrated in international markets.

For context, 250 closures out of 18,000-plus locations is a small number. What it signals is more important than what it changes — Starbucks is willing to shrink slightly in the short term to grow more profitably in the long term.

Whether your local Starbucks is one of the ones going dark this weekend: check the app. If it disappears from the map, that's your answer.

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