Starbucks plans to shut 64 California coffee shops in a broader 250-store U.S. and Canada cull tied to weak performance and customer experience.
The New York Post reported that Starbucks is preparing to close dozens of California locations, with 64 shops across the state flagged for shutdown after outlets cross-checked the company’s app and store locator for sites lacking hours beyond this week.
The California list came from Starbucks superfan and data tracker Winter, who has spent decades trying to visit every company-operated Starbucks in the world. Starbucks has not confirmed those California addresses one by one.
The cuts sit inside a wider plan to close 250 stores across the United States and Canada in the coming days. That is roughly 1% of the company’s North American footprint. The California total alone equals about 2.1% of the chain’s shops in the state.
CEO Brian Niccol’s “Back to Starbucks” strategy, which debuted in 2024, frames the closures. The company is taking a $300 million restructuring charge and launching a $1 billion restructuring and renovation effort.
Starbucks says it is on track to retrofit and “uplift” 1,500 existing North American coffeehouses by Sept. 30. Closing underperforming shops is the other side of that same plan: keep what works, drop what does not.
Chief Operating Officer Mike Grams told employees in a letter that the company had identified locations where it did not believe it could consistently deliver the experience it wanted for customers and partners, or where it did not see a path to acceptable financial performance.
That is the company’s stated standard. Shops that fail the test get cut.
Starbucks told SFGate that coffeehouses set to close will have signage up this weekend to notify customers. The company also plans to transfer workers to nearby stores, though it remains unclear whether every partner moves or whether some jobs disappear.
Customers from Santa Rosa to San Diego will see the change first. The reported list spans the Bay Area, Sacramento, the Central Coast, Los Angeles, Orange County, the Inland Empire, and points beyond.
Northern California locations flagged include multiple Sacramento addresses plus shops in Concord, Gilroy, Hercules, Lafayette, Millbrae, Mountain View, Oroville, Roseville, San Carlos, San Jose, Santa Rosa, South San Francisco, and Walnut Creek.
Central California sites named include Fresno, Freedom, Merced, San Luis Obispo, and Soquel.
Southern California carries the heaviest share of the reported list. Named cities and neighborhoods include:
Those addresses are the Winter compilation cross-checked against missing future hours in the Starbucks app and locator. Again, the company has not confirmed each California store individually.
Grams’s letter did not blame local politics by name. It blamed shops that could not deliver the experience Starbucks wants or could not hit acceptable financial results. Niccol’s turnaround pitch rests on the same idea: fix the coffeehouse, or stop running it.
For California customers, the practical effect is simpler. Dozens of neighborhood shops are set to go dark. Workers are told transfers are coming. Signage is supposed to appear this weekend. And a national chain that once expanded almost without limit is now cutting roughly one in every hundred North American stores while pouring a billion dollars into the ones it keeps.
Markets punish weak locations. Starbucks is finally acting like it knows that, and California is taking a visible share of the bill.