Starbucks Closes Union Coffee Shop and Transfers It to QFC Grocery Store

[SamSpade]

The same thing happened here in Portland at the Hollywood West Fred Meyer store several years ago. Fred Meyer took over the Starbucks location that was on the outside of their store and closed the in-store Peet's location. This was probably 5 or so years ago. Nothing really changed just the POS system and the employees had FM name tags.

I hadn't realized this happened. Interesting info. (I do remember the Peet's closing after the last remodel / removal of the deli seating)

[storewanderer]

It is possible that Starbucks is planning on converting many corporate Starbucks to licensed locations. If there is a supermarket nearby Starbucks would want to cut labor costs and have a supermarket take over all of those locations.

Perhaps Starbucks wants to go to a franchise model like McDonald's where there are very few corporate stores and they get independent owners to run the cafes. This way Starbucks saves money on labor and still makes a profit on food and drinks.

Starbucks could attract large groups of investors to buy franchises and operate these corporate stores. This has been a given for many years. So far the company has not done this. Historically the company has done an excellent job at running a network of corporate operated locations in the US, as other similar chains go to a franchise based model. Based on their current labor issues, I'm not so sure anymore that they are doing an excellent job any longer with running these locations. So suddenly the idea of franchising out locations may start to look more appealing. I think that would be a mistake, and hope it does not happen. We will see if Howard can fix the labor issues. But still, Howard eventually will retire and step back from the company. It seems like other management just keeps screwing things up when he leaves. Not sustainable. So maybe a franchise model is the next path. It is a lot easier to sit back and collect royalties, than operate locations.

[Bluelightspecial]

I think this has less to do with unionization than it does with security. If a Starbuck's closes and they leave the kiosk in a store in California, Oregon or Washington the employees of the Starbucks franchise would be UFCW. Maybe Starbucks doesn't want to deal with the paperwork and HR with having a union at corporate owned stores. However if they are seeing a trend, as they have already said by closing 16 stores already, that their employees are at risk why wouldn't they cut their loses and let the franchise operate inside a grocery store that has security and minimize their loses.

[storewanderer]

I think this has less to do with unionization than it does with security. If a Starbuck's closes and they leave the kiosk in a store in California, Oregon or Washington the employees of the Starbucks franchise would be UFCW. Maybe Starbucks doesn't want to deal with the paperwork and HR with having a union at corporate owned stores. However if they are seeing a trend, as they have already said by closing 16 stores already, that their employees are at risk why wouldn't they cut their loses and let the franchise operate inside a grocery store that has security and minimize their loses.

There are a lot of reasons for Starbucks to operate a location instead of pushing it to a licensee. Let me give you an example, in the University of Nevada Reno a new Starbucks opened, 12-15 years ago, give or take; it opened as a licensee location, run by a licensee who also ran a location at a ski resort somewhere around Lake Tahoe (maybe Northstar), at the time.

The licensee had a lot of problems running the location. They had trouble staffing it, they did not always have all items in stock, their pricing was higher than corporate locations, they did not take mobile orders, they did take the Starbucks card but it was clumsy and through a terminal away from the cash register, they printed about 4 slips for every transaction and any credit card had to sign the receipt and give a tip or zero out the tip line and write the total, and cleanliness of the very large seating area (when it opened it was the largest Starbucks in the western United States) was poor. For some reason they were horribly inefficient. They did not offer refills of drinks at any discount (full price only), and also refused to provide ice water (at all). The location did not necessarily open when there were events in the building it was in or during sporting events, if it was outside the standard schedule for the location.

At some point then, the location became a corporate location. The mobile ordering was activated immediately, hours were extended significantly, staffing levels increased, and hours started to be adjusted to match events in the building. It was a significant improvement in the operation of the location and business increased. Policies with regards to refills and ice water of course became consistent with other locations (.50 refill on coffee/tea if you bought new cup that same visit at full price, free with Gold card or whatever it was, and ice water was given at no cost upon request). With the thousands of footsteps at this location each day they could not afford to have it run by a poor licensee.

These grocery store strip mall locations on the other hand, if they are already low volume, it may not matter as much. The grocery store operators are large licensees of Starbucks and should be able to run the locations well. I have had some pretty poor experiences with some grocery store Starbucks but they seem better than they once were.

[SamSpade]

Located which Seattle Starbucks is moving to QFC operation - It is the Holman Rd. store. QFC acquired this (like many others) from an independent at some point, thus the QFC ball neon sign (similar to a 76 ball). This location appears to be fully enclosed within the QFC, so I am not surprised that there were discussions about QFC taking it over. The union effort probably accelerated or reopened things but ((shrug)) it is difficult to say from the outside. That will be for the NLRB mediator or courts to determine.

It is also possible these discussions were opened if/when Kroger made a decision to remodel this QFC.

This store also contains a Panda Express (very unusual for Seattle area grocers, not like Safeway or VONS in SoCal) and a contract post office.

[marshd1000]

There is an interesting history behind the Holman Road QFC. Initially it was an Art's Food Center and Marketime Drugs. Marketime was owned by Fred Meyer and it closed when the nearby Greenwood Fred Meyer was acquired from Leslie's (Weisfield's), Art's took over the whole space and the store became Art's Family Center. The current Starbucks space was an Art's operated restaurant, which under QFC became the Piper's Creek Cafe, a nice sit-down restaurant. Somewhere in the timeline Fred Meyer acquired QFC and the restaurant closed and was leased out to Starbucks. This may have been before QFC, Fred Meyer or Kroger had the licensed Starbucks operations. So the history behind this store with the restaurant, the size of the space probably has a lot to do with why it was a corporate Starbucks for a long time! There were a few other corporate Starbucks that actually operated kiosks inside QFC dating from when those locations were Olson's Food Centers.

[storewanderer]

We don't know the specifics on why this happened, but there are obviously a lot of factors. But I don't expect this case to go anywhere with NLRB at all, if it even gets glanced at.

But those corporate Starbucks employees can go transfer to other Starbucks locations and start union drives at those locations...

[Bluelightspecial]

I think this has less to do with unionization than it does with security. If a Starbuck's closes and they leave the kiosk in a store in California, Oregon or Washington the employees of the Starbucks franchise would be UFCW. Maybe Starbucks doesn't want to deal with the paperwork and HR with having a union at corporate owned stores. However if they are seeing a trend, as they have already said by closing 16 stores already, that their employees are at risk why wouldn't they cut their loses and let the franchise operate inside a grocery store that has security and minimize their loses.

There are a lot of reasons for Starbucks to operate a location instead of pushing it to a licensee. Let me give you an example, in the University of Nevada Reno a new Starbucks opened, 12-15 years ago, give or take; it opened as a licensee location, run by a licensee who also ran a location at a ski resort somewhere around Lake Tahoe (maybe Northstar), at the time.

The licensee had a lot of problems running the location. They had trouble staffing it, they did not always have all items in stock, their pricing was higher than corporate locations, they did not take mobile orders, they did take the Starbucks card but it was clumsy and through a terminal away from the cash register, they printed about 4 slips for every transaction and any credit card had to sign the receipt and give a tip or zero out the tip line and write the total, and cleanliness of the very large seating area (when it opened it was the largest Starbucks in the western United States) was poor. For some reason they were horribly inefficient. They did not offer refills of drinks at any discount (full price only), and also refused to provide ice water (at all). The location did not necessarily open when there were events in the building it was in or during sporting events, if it was outside the standard schedule for the location.

At some point then, the location became a corporate location. The mobile ordering was activated immediately, hours were extended significantly, staffing levels increased, and hours started to be adjusted to match events in the building. It was a significant improvement in the operation of the location and business increased. Policies with regards to refills and ice water of course became consistent with other locations (.50 refill on coffee/tea if you bought new cup that same visit at full price, free with Gold card or whatever it was, and ice water was given at no cost upon request). With the thousands of footsteps at this location each day they could not afford to have it run by a poor licensee.

These grocery store strip mall locations on the other hand, if they are already low volume, it may not matter as much. The grocery store operators are large licensees of Starbucks and should be able to run the locations well. I have had some pretty poor experiences with some grocery store Starbucks but they seem better than they once were.
[/quote
There is a HUGE difference between Reno, where you live, and the locations in Los Angeles that Starbucks is/has closed. Your rationale doesn't make sense,

[Bluelightspecial]

Starbucks has decided to close locations based on employee security. Nothing else. Their decision to close a store in West Hollywood, which was very high volume, is evidence. Discussions of franchise or corporate stores are irrelevant. Starbucks will continue to close stores they fell the city will not keep safe for employees,

[storewanderer]

Starbucks has decided to close locations based on employee security. Nothing else. Their decision to close a store in West Hollywood, which was very high volume, is evidence. Discussions of franchise or corporate stores are irrelevant. Starbucks will continue to close stores they fell the city will not keep safe for employees,

Seems like a very random list of locations to close for that reason. Is there a history of police activity at these locations being closed? Have they all had armed robberies? There are many locations that would appear to be "problem locations" that are being kept open. What specific safety issue characteristic makes these locations so far gone that they need to be closed?

The McDonalds CEO is complaining about employee safety in Chicago now. Says it is impacting their restaurants and also making it so corporate employees don't want to come back to the office and also making it so they have difficulty recruiting. I guess they should have kept the HQ in Oak Brook.