Starbucks Closes 250 Coffee Shops — These States Were Hit The Hardest

On September 24, Starbucks posted an official announcement that led with an optimistic subheading: "We're accelerating our pace toward completing 1,500 coffeehouse uplifts ... Our Back to Starbucks strategy is working." The actual copy of the message, however, revealed a less positive statistic, which is that 250 Starbucks locations would close by the end of that week. Tasting Table reported that Starbucks planned to close stores and lay off employees on September 25. Now, less than a week later, it's becoming clear which states are most affected. 

In terms of overall totals, California — the U.S. state with the most Starbucks locations — has been hit the hardest by this mass of coffeehouse shutterings, with 43 Starbucks closing in the state alone. Other states with especially large numbers of Starbucks store closures include New York, which had 16 closures, and Texas, which had 14. The rest of the states had 10 or fewer closures. Canada is also included in those 250 closures, with 17 Starbucks locations disappearing from our neighbor to the north. 

As devastating as it seems for states to lose dozens of Starbucks locations, there's another side to mass closures like this that doesn't always get as much attention. Vermont, the state with the most expensive cup of Starbucks coffee, is the U.S. state with the fewest Starbucks locations, with just 11. So even though it's only losing one Starbucks, that's still a significant blow.

Similarly, North Dakota, which was home to just 29 Starbucks locations, is closing two stores. It's a smaller loss percentage than Vermont, but it still represents a measurable drop. Meanwhile, Rhode Island had a respectable 35 Starbucks locations, given it's the smallest state in the U.S., but it is losing two of those.

Again, this all tends to get lost when looking at the raw total numbers, especially next to California closing over 40 Starbucks locations. But when a state loses almost 10% of the total number of chain locations, that isn't something to take lightly, either.