Final week, Starbucks introduced the closure of 1% of its North American shops by the top of 2025, leading to sudden job losses for tons of of baristas.
The closures are one a part of a $1 billion restructuring technique dubbed “Again to Starbucks”; the espresso chain can even be shedding 900 company staff.
Processing the information in actual time, Starbucks baristas have made their emotions in regards to the closures clear, filming their reactions and going viral within the course of.
A Starbucks worker at a Washington state location posted a heartfelt video to TikTok final week.
“Starbucks completely closing my retailer and leaving us jobless was not on my 2025 bingo card,” she wrote alongside a clip, which has greater than 1,000,000 views, of her hugging a coworker.
In a follow-up video, she wrote: “making a banana cream matcha to deal with my retailer completely closing.”
In one other video seen greater than 6 million views, one worker dances to Michael Jackson’s “They Don’t Care About Us” on the counters and tables of the Starbucks that employed her earlier than its imminent closure.
The announcement assured that baristas from closing shops will both be provided severance packages or transferred to new areas. However quite than anticipate official information of their destiny, many determined to take issues into their very own fingers, crowdsourcing their very own listing of shuttering areas.
On TikTok, a gaggle of staff mentioned their predictions for the place they may be relocated within the shuffle. The massive reveal: Everybody within the video was let go.
“We deserve higher, and I’m sorry for each barista going by it proper now too,” one other barista captioned her video, claiming she was given simply two days’ discover of her retailer’s closure.
Starbucks Employees United, the union that represents 12,000 baristas throughout 45 states and the District of Columbia, stated it was requesting info from Starbucks in regards to the deliberate closures.
“We count on to interact in results bargaining for each impacted union retailer, as we have now executed elsewhere, so employees might be positioned in one other Starbucks retailer in line with their preferences,” reads the assertion printed final week. “It has by no means been extra clear why baristas at Starbucks want the backing of a union.”
Starbucks introduced it’s closing areas the place it doesn’t see “a path to monetary efficiency,” and people it recognized as unable “to create the bodily surroundings our clients and companions count on.”
