Starbucks Closes 36 SoCal Cafes in a Second Cull

Starbucks went dark at 36 Southern California cafes over the Sept. 26-27 weekend, part of about 250 North America closures announced on Sept. 24. A store tracker known as Winter had listed the shops after the company app marked them closed, and follow-up checks found them gone from the app, with many tagged permanently closed on Google.

Starbucks would not confirm those addresses. The weekend still landed as the chain’s second big Southern California cull in 12 months, even after comparable sales in North America rose 8.1% in the quarter ended June 28.

Southern California Absorbed 36 of the 250 Closures

Chief operating officer Mike Grams told partners the company would close approximately 250 coffeehouses later that week, about 1% of its more than 18,000 North America shops. Winter’s spreadsheet, built from those app hours, put 36 of them in Southern California and 64 California locations slated to close from San Diego to Santa Rosa, with none in San Francisco proper.

That is 36 of the 250, or about one in seven of the whole North America cut, sitting in one region. A Starbucks spokesperson would only say coffeehouses that are closing would have signage up over the weekend to notify customers.

THE 36 BY COUNTY

Los Angeles County alone accounts for 20 of the 36. The six Orange County shops and six San Diego County shops split most of the rest, with three in San Bernardino County and Temecula standing as the lone Riverside County entry.

The Kearny Mesa Strip Had Too Many Shops

Read the addresses as a map of an older density bet, not a random sample of weak towns. San Diego city has five names on the list, and four of them sit in the Kearny Mesa, Clairemont, Murphy Canyon and Copley Park cluster, a tight band of office, industrial and mesa retail. Encinitas on Leucadia Boulevard is the coastal neighbor that went with them.

Los Angeles repeats the pattern in towers and corridors. Century Park East is a Century City office block. 555 West 5th Street and 801 South Olive Street are downtown. 6081 Center Drive sits in the Howard Hughes Center business park. Santa Monica shows up twice, at 2901 Main Street and 1030 Wilshire Boulevard. Calabasas and Westlake Village both land on Agoura Road.

WHAT THE ADDRESSES SHARE

• Office blocks: Century City, downtown Fifth Street and Olive Street, and the Center Drive business-park shop all depend on weekday desk traffic that never fully returned.
• Mall and power-center shells: Ontario Mills Parkway and 2800 North Main Street in Santa Ana are shopping-center coffee, not neighborhood third places.
• Doubled-up strips: five San Diego city shops, two Santa Monica shops, and two Agoura Road shops mean the next siren was already close.
• True neighborhood rooms: Encinitas, Beverly Glen Circle, and Main Street Santa Monica are the cafes Grams still has to replace with “nearby” stores.

The company has not said any one of those formats was the test. The list still reads as a clean-up of places where two Starbucks were sharing the same customers, or where the building could not be remade into the warmer room Brian Niccol wants.

A Second Cull Arrives 12 Months After the First

Niccol took over in 2024 and named the plan Back to Starbucks. Last September the board already approved a much larger shutdown package, a roughly $1 billion plan that has since closed more than 600 stores in North America and Europe and cut hundreds of non-retail jobs. Southern California lost a wave of shops in that round too, including a run of Wilshire Boulevard cafes.

Twelve months later the board voted again. Fiscal 2026 ended Sept. 27, and the new closures were timed to land in that window.

TWO YEARS OF BACK TO STARBUCKS

1. September 2024: Brian Niccol becomes chief executive and starts the Back to Starbucks reset after a stretch of weak sales and long waits.
2. September 2025: The first large cull is approved under a roughly $1 billion plan; more than 600 North America and Europe stores later close.
3. July 29, 2026: Starbucks reports a fourth straight quarter of comparable-sales growth, with North America up 8.1%.
4. September 22, 2026: The board approves another North America portfolio cut under the same strategy.
5. September 24, 2026: Grams posts the partner letter and the company files the 8-K for about 250 closures.
6. September 26-27, 2026: The listed Southern California shops go dark as fiscal 2026 ends.

Grams wrote that every year some coffeehouses close and others open, and that this round was still hard on partners, customers and the blocks around them. He also wrote that the strategy is working, which is the tension inside the weekend: the chain is growing on the stores it is keeping, and it is done waiting on the ones it is not.

The Turnaround Showed Up in the Comps

The July 29 earnings release is why a second cull looks cold on paper. In the quarter ended June 28, North America comparable store sales increased 8.1%, on 4.5% more transactions and a 3.5% higher average ticket. U.S. comparable sales rose 7.9%, on 4.2% more transactions and a 3.6% higher ticket. Global comparable sales were also up 7.9%.

North America revenue in that quarter was $7.4 billion, up 7%. The segment ended June with 18,371 coffeehouses, the United States with 16,933, and the company with 41,304 shops worldwide. Niccol said the quarter proved that an extraordinary cup of coffee, human connection and customer experience “win the day, every day,” and that the company is “relentlessly focused on reclaiming the third place.”

THE QUARTER THAT STILL CLOSED SHOPS

• North America comps: Up 8.1%, the figure Grams pointed to when he said the business had returned to strong growth.
• Four-quarter streak: The July 29 release billed a fourth straight quarter of comparable-sales growth and a second of margin expansion.
• Uplifts still running: Grams said the company is accelerating toward 1,500 coffeehouse remodels, under a service model it calls Green Apron Service.
• The bill for the prune: The Sept. 24 filing pegs approximately $300 million of restructuring charges, about $200 million in cash for lease exits and separation pay and $100 million in non-cash write-offs of cafe assets.

Full-year net new openings worldwide are now expected at about 440, down from a prior range of 600 to 650. The 8-K says that cut is based on the 250 North America closures, partly offset by more openings overseas. The company still says it is building a pipeline of new North America coffeehouses. It is shrinking the old map in order to fund the new one.

What Happens to the Next Store Over?

Grams told partners the company will help customers keep their routines by directing them to nearby coffeehouses. That sentence is the operational whole of the weekend for anyone who still wants a Starbucks in Encinitas, on Main Street in Santa Monica, or on Kearny Mesa.

We’re making this decision for a simple reason: we want every Starbucks coffeehouse to be a place customers love and partners are proud to work.

Mike Grams, chief operating officer, in a Sept. 24 letter to partners

The nearby shop now inherits the mobile orders, the morning peak and the Rewards regulars. Green Apron Service was built to slow the handoff down enough for a greeting and a correct drink. Dumping a closed cafe’s tickets onto the next store over is the opposite of that design, at least for a while, and it is how a remodel at the surviving shop can still feel like a wait.

On X the loud argument was boycott politics and “support local,” which skips the quieter problem on the ground. The listed shops were often a short hop from another Starbucks that stayed open. The customers do not vanish. They move one store over, or they finally try the independent on the same block.

Partners Get a Transfer Offer and a Thinner Staff

Grams said the company is speaking directly with affected partners and will offer transfers wherever possible, with severance for those it cannot place. That is the official path. A barista whose North America shop was in the 250, posting after the doors closed, wrote that they took the reassignment for the benefits and that nearly everyone they had worked with was fired or leaving.

Transfers concentrate survivors into the stores Niccol is remodeling. They also leave those floors short of the crews that knew the old regulars, which is a real cost in a plan that sells human connection. Separation pay is inside that $200 million cash bucket, alongside the price of getting out of leases early.

For the people on Agoura Road or Hospitality Lane, the weekend was not a 1% portfolio footnote. It was a last shift, a cardboard sign, and a hope that the next district had hours.

One State Took 64 of the Closures

California’s 64 names are about one in four of the 250. Southern California’s 36 are the heavier end of that state list, and they arrived a year after the same region already lost a large cluster in the first Niccol cull. The chain still refuses to publish the roster, so Winter’s app method and the empty listings are the public record unless Starbucks says otherwise.

Niccol has more work on the stores that remain, which is his own line. Grams will point Encinitas and Main Street to the next siren, and that next siren now has to deliver the warmer room with extra tickets on the screen.