Starbucks will close roughly 250 coffeehouses in the United States and Canada and take about $300 million in restructuring charges, most of it landing in a fiscal year that ends this month. Roughly $200 million of that is cash going out the door, and the company says it is going primarily to lease exit costs and employee separation benefits.
The closures were disclosed in a Form 8-K filed with the Securities and Exchange Commission on Sept. 24. Starbucks’ board approved the actions on Sept. 22 under the company’s previously announced “Back to Starbucks” strategy, which the filing describes as focused on “revitalizing coffeehouses, enhancing the customer experience, and strengthening the Company’s coffeehouse portfolio.” The filing describes the stores being shut as roughly 1% of the company’s more than 18,000 North America coffeehouses β locations, in the company’s words, “that do not deliver the coffeehouse experience and financial performance expected of the brand.”
The remaining $100 million is non-cash, tied to disposal and impairment of company-operated store assets.
What the landlords see
For property owners, the operative number is the $200 million in cash charges. Lease exit costs are what a tenant pays to get out of a lease before its contractual term runs out β buyouts, termination fees, or the accelerated recognition of remaining obligations β and they signal that a meaningful share of the 250 sites are not simply leases quietly reaching expiration.
Starbucks did not identify the locations or break out how many are in the United States versus Canada. Nor did it separate the lease costs from severance within the $200 million figure.
The company also cut its growth guidance. In a Regulation FD disclosure in the same filing, Starbucks said it now expects approximately 440 net new company-operated and licensed coffeehouse openings globally in fiscal 2026, down from prior guidance of 600 to 650. The revision is a direct function of the 250 North American closures, the company said, partially offset by faster net openings in international markets.
That is the part worth watching for anyone underwriting retail rent rolls: a chain that had guided to as many as 650 net additions will finish the year at roughly two-thirds of that pace, with the entire shortfall coming out of North America. Starbucks said it “continues to see significant longer-term growth opportunity ahead in North America and is actively developing a strong pipeline of new coffeehouses.”
A second consecutive September
This is the second year running that Starbucks has approved a store-closure program in the last week of its fiscal year. On Sept. 23, 2025, the board approved a far larger restructuring: about $1 billion in charges, with 90% attributable to the North America business.
The composition of that program is instructive on the real estate side. Starbucks estimated roughly $450 million of the $1 billion was “primarily associated with accelerated amortization of ROU lease assets and other lease costs due to store closures prior to the end of contractual lease terms” β in other words, the cost of walking away from leases early. Another $400 million was asset disposal and impairment, and about $150 million was employee separation benefits.
In a letter to North America employees dated Sept. 25, 2025 and filed as an exhibit to that 8-K, Niccol wrote that the company’s North America company-operated count would decline by about 1% in fiscal 2025 after accounting for both openings and closures, and that Starbucks would end that year with “nearly 18,300 total Starbucks locations β company operated and licensed β across the U.S. and Canada.” He also said the company planned to “uplift” more than 1,000 locations over the following 12 months with new design work, and that employees at closing stores would be offered transfers to nearby locations where possible.
Set the two filings side by side and the pattern is a company shrinking its North American footprint at the margin while spending on the stores it keeps. The 2025 program paired closures with a commitment to remodel more than 1,000 cafes; the 2026 program is smaller, more surgical, and still large enough to cut roughly a quarter to a third off the year’s net-opening target.
Context for retail space
Two hundred fifty small-format storefronts returning to the market over a matter of weeks is not a shock to national retail supply. It is, however, concentrated, and it arrives while brokerage results still point to active leasing: Cushman & Wakefield reported second-quarter revenue up 11% to $2.76 billion on a leasing surge earlier this year, and NAR this year launched an index ranking where commercial real estate demand is building.
What Starbucks has not said is where the closures fall. Until the locations surface in local filings and listings, the practical read for owners is narrower than the headline: a single national credit tenant is paying to exit a set of leases early rather than waiting them out, and its own guidance says it will add fewer replacement locations in North America this year than it planned. More of our commercial real estate coverage is here.
