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Some towns got just a sip of Starbucks
(St. Louis Post-Dispatch (KRT) Via Acquire Media NewsEdge) Jul. 21--WASHINGTON, Mo. -- Starbucks, they hardly knew you.
When a stand-alone Starbucks store opened here seven months ago, it was the first of its kind in the entire county.
True, a smaller Starbucks outpost already existed at the Target store in the same shopping center. But this full-fledged Starbucks was the real deal. It had the sophisticated ambience Starbucks is renowned for, plus a small outdoor patio and drive-thru lane. On a recent summer day, it looked busy. The store seemed to signal the town's arrival, retail-wise.
Now this Starbucks is slated to be closed.
Seattle-based Starbucks
released late last week a list of 600 stores nationwide that would be shuttered by March to boost the company's profitability and stock price. Sixteen stores in the St. Louis area were on the hit list, including ones in St. Louis, St. Charles and Webster Groves. But none were as remote as the one here in Franklin County.
"I'm surprised," said Joe Vernaci, developer of Phoenix Center II, where the Starbucks stands, for now.
Starbucks said July 1 that it was scaling back, ending years of rapid expansion. In the St. Louis area, there were more than 80 Starbucks stores -- including both stand-alone stores and smaller licensed stores at retailers such as Barnes & Noble and Target. The company provided few details at first, planning to roll out the closures over several months. This fueled rumors in coffee lines and online: Which stores would be gone?
Starbucks responded by releasing the complete list. But the company's handling of the closures has left some customers and workers with a bitter taste.
At the sole Starbucks in Jennings last week, there were no signs the store was in its final days. Baristas continued to push the newest drink concoction -- a line of smoothies called Vivanno -- as if the end was not so near. The store will close Sunday. The store had opened only in March 2007 at the edge of the Buzz Westfall Plaza on the Boulevard shopping center, across from the entrance to the Emerson corporate campus.
"I wouldn't think this store would be closing because it's new and it looks like it is doing well," said customer Vena Sims, 24, who sat with her cousins sipping a mocha latte with a hint of vanilla. "This is upsetting."
Closing dates for other stores in the St. Louis region have not been announced. Starbucks said it would provide its workers -- called partners -- one month's notice and help them find jobs at other stores. But some baristas worried their jobs would be harder for the company to absorb as the closings rolled on.
At the Starbucks near the Euclid and Laclede intersection in St. Louis' Central West End, a barista said he was telling his regular customers that the store would close sometime in the next three months. Some customers were surprised a Starbucks open just nine months was shuttering. But they also were relieved that another Starbucks sat three blocks away, said the barista, who declined to provide his name because he was not authorized by the company to talk about the matter.
Another Starbucks open less than a year, the store on Seventh Street in Soulard, is closing, too.
Starbucks said 70 percent of the stores on the closure list had opened since fiscal 2006. The loss of 16 Starbucks in the St. Louis region hit some customers harder than others.
"All three of the stores on my way to work are closing," lamented one poster on the Starbucks Gossip website. The poster added, "I wonder if I can get a refund of my recent card reload."
In the days before Starbucks released its closure list, representing about 8.5 percent of all U.S. stores, developer Vernaci felt confident the Starbucks in Washington was safe.
"I have a certain comfort level just from seeing the activity there at any hour -- there is a lot of traffic," Vernaci said.
The shopping center, still being built out on the former site of a pig farm along Highway 100, bustled with the county's first Target, its first Kohl's.
Starbucks had signed a 10-year lease with no bailout, Vernaci said. Breaking the deal "just doesn't make good business sense."
But on Friday, he got the official word: The only bona-fide Starbucks in town would soon be gone.
tfrankel@post-dispatch.com -- 314-340-8110
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Copyright (c) 2008, St. Louis Post-Dispatch
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