A Starbucks in San Jose is one of the 250 stores expected to close in North America.<\/p>\n
The Starbucks at 1205 The Alameda in San Jose is expected to close on Saturday. Jennifer Martinez and Rebecca Schroeder took their coffee break and made their usual trip to the shop, knowing it would be the last time.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt was very abrupt. We didn\u2019t even know until a coworker came and told us just right now, so we came over to say goodbye to the folks who work here, because they\u2019ve been so great every morning,\u201d Schroeder said.<\/p>\n
\u201cI understand, I think, from a business perspective that they probably did it because they didn\u2019t want everyone quitting or bailing, but the \u2018human\u2019 side of it is really… it\u2019s harsh,\u201d Martinez said.<\/p>\n
San Jose State University economist Robert Chapman Wood says that bond with customers was somewhat lost when Starbucks founder Howard Schultz retired.\u00a0<\/p>\n
It is a bit of business magic that\u2019s hard to duplicate. \u00a0<\/p>\n
\u201cThe whole thing about creating a relationship between thousands of people in hundreds of thousands of people in tens of thousands of stores and the customers who walk in, that\u2019s not something that any professor can tell you how to do,\u201d Wood said.<\/p>\n
Starbucks says it plans to revamp many stores to offer a more inviting, traditional coffeehouse feel.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt definitely depends for Starbucks on creating that atmosphere people will choose to go to, as opposed to just producing coffee, because other places produce coffee for less money than Starbucks,\u201d Wood said.<\/p>\n
But for those used to this neighborhood Starbucks, what can\u2019t be recreated is convenience, even though the next closest Starbucks is only 0.7 miles away.\u00a0<\/p>\n
There are still about 18,000 Starbucks stores in North America.<\/p>\n
The Bay Area Starbucks expected to close, according to the Business Times, include:<\/p>\n
3547 Mt. Diablo Blvd. in Lafayette<\/p>\n
1663\u00a0N. California Blvd. in Walnut Creek<\/p>\n
176 Gateway\u00a0Blvd. in South San Francisco<\/p>\n
138 Calistoga Rd. in Santa Rosa<\/p>\n
2240\u00a0Mendocino Ave. in Santa Rosa<\/p>\n
1187 San Carlos Ave. in San Carlos<\/p>\n
119\u00a0N. Rollins Rd. in Millbrae<\/p>\n
1135 Industrial Rd. in San Carlos<\/p>\n
1037 El Monte Ave. in Mountain View<\/p>\n
1205 The Alameda in San Jose<\/p>\n
3700 San Pablo Ave. in Hercules<\/p>\n
1701 Willow Pass Rd. in Concord<\/p>\n
795 First St. in Gilroy<\/p>\n
The list could change or expand as Starbucks updates its store listings.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"A Starbucks in San Jose is one of the 250 stores expected to close in North America. The…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":476030,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[29],"tags":[88,90,89],"class_list":["post-476029","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-san-jose","tag-san-jose","tag-san-jose-headlines","tag-san-jose-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/476029","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=476029"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/476029\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/476030"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=476029"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=476029"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=476029"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}