Coffee chain Starbucks has announced that seven of its locations in downtown San Francisco will close over the next several weeks.
Sam Jefferies, a spokesman for Starbucks, confirmed the closures in a statement to SFGATE. Employees at the seven affected stores were informed of the impending closures on Oct. 3. According to Jefferies, all affected employees will be given the option to transfer to a different store.
The following Starbucks locations in the city's downtown are set to shutter permanently:
- Mission and Main
- Geary and Taylor
- 425 Battery
- 398 Market
- 4th and Market
- 555 California
- Bush and Van Ness
"Each year as a standard course of business, we evaluate the store portfolio to determine where we can best meet our community and customers' needs," said Jefferies. "This includes opening new locations, identifying stores in need of investment or renovation, exploring locations where an alternative format is needed, and in some instances, re-evaluating our footprint."
"Determining how and where we invest is done through a standard process of evaluating our store portfolio annually to determine where we can best meet our community and customers' needs," Starbucks Regional Vice President for Northern California Jessica Borton said in a letter sent to affected employees.
"This includes opening new locations, identifying stores in need of investment or renovation, and exploring locations where an alternative format is needed. It also includes making hard decisions about where our stores are located. This year, those discussions have resulted in making the very difficult decision to close seven of the stores in our area." (Related: "Woke" Starbucks closes 16 branches across the country due to skyrocketing crime and drug use in restrooms.)
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The coffee chain recently opened a pickup-only location at 333 Market Street and will invest over $2.5 million in renovations at four other stores across the city, Jefferies remarked. With the closure of the seven stores, Starbucks' 59 locations in the City by the Bay will drop to 52. The Starbucks spokesman refused to comment as to whether crime in the downtown played a role in the decision to close the seven stores.
Starbucks just the latest of many businesses to close in SF
The coffee chain whose headquarters is based in Seattle is just the latest business that has closed down locations in the City by the Bay. It followed some retailers that permanently shuttered their doors due to the city's deteriorating situation.
In April, Whole Foods Market (WFM) shuttered its Trinity Place location more than a year after opening. The branch, which opened in March 2022 to much pomp, cited "personnel safety" as a reason for the closure. A spokesperson for WFM said all team members from the now-closed Trinity Place location "will be transferred to one of our nearby locations."
But an unnamed source told the San Francisco Standard that high levels of crime and open drug use in the store's vicinity played a huge part in the closure. An anonymous manager attested to the source's remarks, adding that WFM had been dealing with retail theft, crime and drug use on the premises.
In August, department store chain Nordstrom permanently closed its Westfield Mall location in the city's downtown after 35 years. The business had announced the closure, which frees up more than 300,000 square feet of retail space, earlier in May.
"The dynamics of the downtown San Francisco market have changed dramatically over the past several years," Nordstrom Chief Stores Officer Jamie Nordstrom wrote in a May 2 letter to employees. "[The situation is] impacting customer foot traffic to our stores and our ability to operate successfully."
Unibail-Rodamco-Westfield, the owner of Westfield Mall, seconded the Nordstrom executive's remarks. "The planned closure of Nordstrom underscores the deteriorating situation in downtown San Francisco," it said in a statement. "A growing number of retailers and businesses are leaving the area due to the unsafe conditions for customers, retailers and employees – coupled with the fact that these significant issues are preventing an economic recovery of the area."
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