A sign taped to the front door of the Starbucks on Vine Street in downtown Cincinnati announces the location's closure.

Starbucks announced that it would close about 1% of its stores in its latest move under CEO Brian Niccol's Back to Starbucks transformation strategy in a message to employees on Sept. 25.

The company did not release a list of stores that it is set to close, however, The Seattle Times confirmed that its Reserve Roastery and Reserve store in its hometown are among the stores set to shutter.

The specialty coffee chain will close specific locations "where we’re unable to create the physical environment our customers and partners expect, or where we don’t see a path to financial performance," Niccol said in the memo sent to employees and posted on the Starbucks blog.

The company said that the Starbucks app will be updated to reflect the closures on Sunday in an email to USA TODAY.

Starbucks Workers United, which represents 12,000 baristas across 45 states and the District of Columbia, said it would formally request information about the planned closures in a statement issued after Niccol's memo was released.

"We expect to engage in effects bargaining for every impacted union store, as we have done elsewhere, so workers can be placed in another Starbucks store according to their preferences," the union said.

Starbucks' website offers potential glimpse into closures

Ad-hoc efforts to identify closing stores started shortly after the announcement.

A public Google sheet has over 200 entries marking likely closures as of late Sept. 25 and a Reddit thread of likely closures has over 230 comments.

One comment shows a letter that appears to be placed on a door at a location on Route 4 in Fort Lee, New Jersey that reads: "We have made the incredibly difficult decision to close this Starbucks location by the end of this week." The same letter was photographed at locations in Ohio and Delaware by parts of the USA TODAY Network

The unofficial list contained in the Google Sheet shows 188 locations marked as closing in the United States, with 67 of them located in California.

Store pages for the locations listed in the sheet and on the thread reviewed by USA TODAY indicate that the stores will be closed starting Sunday, Sept. 29, but the company would not confirm that those locations are closing, instead pointing to the app update.

The company stated in its most recent quarterly earnings release that it will have approximately 18,300 coffee shops by the end of its fiscal year, which closes this month. This means it will have about 430 fewer locations in the United States and Canada than it did as of June 29, 2025.

Starbucks previously announced it would close 80 to 90 Starbucks "Pick Up" stores in more than 20 states. Those locations were "exclusively designed for mobile orders and quick pick up without the wait," the company said at the time.

This story was updated to add a gallery.

This article originally appeared on USA TODAY: Which Starbucks stores are closing down? Here's what we know so far

Reporting by James Powel and Mike Snider, USA TODAY / USA TODAY

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