Starbucks is shuttering 16 store locations nationwide after store managers reported a surge in drug use among customers and outsiders as well as an increase in crime in certain areas.
Six of the stores will be closed down in the company’s hometown of Seattle and six more will be shutting down in the Los Angeles metro area.
Two Starbucks restaurants will cease operating in Portland, Ore., while one store each will close in Philadelphia and Washington, DC.
It was reported that store managers vented their frustrations to company executives. They were concerned over employees feeling unsafe amid a surge of assaults, thefts, and drug use in and around the Starbucks’ locations.
The company responded by giving store managers discretion to deny free access to the store’s bathrooms, which are open to the public as per corporate policy.
Last month, Starbucks interim CEO Howard Schultz said the company was rethinking its “open bathroom” policy due to mounting concerns about public safety.
“There is an issue of, just, safety in our stores, in terms of people coming in who use our stores as a public bathroom,” Schultz said. “We have to provide a safe environment for our people and our customers. The mental health crisis in the country is severe, acute and getting worse.”
Managers will have more leeway when it comes to rearranging the seating layouts and adjusting hours of operation in order to address employees’ concern for safety.
The Seattle-based coffee chain plans to reassign the employees from its shut down locations to other restaurants.
Violent crime and theft, in the past two years, has been on the rise in large cities. Seattle has seen a rise in both violent and property crime since the coronavirus pandemic.
Los Angeles has seen more people killed by guns during the first six months of 2022, than it has during the same period in any of the past 15 years.
Two of the stores in Seattle that are closing have been unionized while one restaurant in Portland has petitioned to unionize.
Starbucks workers at more than 130 locations nationwide have voted to unionize while scores of others are in the process of doing so. There are more than 9,000 locations across North America.
Pro-union activists have accused the company of intentionally shuttering stores as a punitive measure to retaliate against organized labor.