Starbucks closures dodge Durham

Starbucks isn't everyone's favorite coffee shop, but hey, we serve all comers here at BCR, right? (Including Mrs. BCR, for whom the Starbucks on NC 55 down by the Park is, in fairness, just about the only caffeine option available on very early mornings in the office.)

To that end, it's worth noting that the Bull City has emerged unscathed from Starbucks' announcement it will be closing 600 underperforming stores in the US.

Although the corporate office mentioned that the vast majority of SBUX to close would be outlets open less than a couple of years -- a rubric that applies to the Indigo Commons, North Durham, NC 55 and Page Road locations, and possibly one of the two Southpoint outlets -- no Durham stores are slated for closing, according to this PDF from Starbucks corporate.

One Chapel Hill store at Chatham Downs is the only Triangle casualty expected. Five Charlotte and one Winston-Salem stores hit the casualty list, along with such locales as Hickory, Wilson, Hickory and Greenville.

Comments

[Meredith]

There are actually two starbucks in Chatham Downs..one free-standing and one inside the Harris Teeter. So this closing makes total sense. They are literally 500 feet from one another.

[emily]

Not that I'm a big fan, but it's nice to have the option. I live in North Durham so I'm glad to hear the one near me is staying put!

[southdurhamite]

There is another alternative on Highway 55. The Ideas Coffee Shop (locally owned) is on the left going south between Sedwick and Alexander. Nice folks. Good coffee.

[jeremy]

The Starbucks on the American Tobacco Campus closed last month or early this month.
It's being replaced with a more versatile coffee/lunch shop and "green"...Saladelia.

[KeepDurhamDifferent!]

Ideas Coffee is great if you like a lot of Jesus with your morning joe. The satanists among us prefer SBUX (or even better, Benetis across the street from Ideas). Fans of Rachel Ray and/or Hezbollah have the Dunkin' on Davis Dr.

[Gary Miller]

I moved back to Durham after a stint in Seattle. I was an academic adviser in the UW Business School there and had the opportunity to hear from people from many of the well-known PacNW companies, including Starbucks.

I was surprised at the time to hear them talking as if there was no saturation point on their stores, nor any economic downturn that could touch them.

One of the spokespersons said something like "not only do we not think we've oversaturated our market, we are pushing to open 5000 additional stores globally in the next 10 years." I'm paraphrasing, but that was the point being made.

I suppose things didn't work out that way. Of course, I'm sure they're still opening new stores in other countries and expanding their market. But, it sounds like perhaps they did reach a turning point in the US.

Personally, I always got a kick out of the fact that it was Tully's Coffee corporate strategy to let Starbucks spend money on scouting the best locations for coffee shops... and then opening a Tully's just across the street. :)

[Gene Galin]

Chatham Downs Starbucks to close
July 19th, 2008

Date: Fri, 18 Jul 2008 00:42:48 -0400
From: Gene Galin
Subject: Standalone Chatham Downs Starbucks to close

Starbucks Corp. said it will close 600 stores in the United States in the next year and cut back the number of new stores it had planned to open.

70 percent of those slated for closure had opened after the start of 2006. To put it another way, Starbucks is closing 19 percent of all U.S. company-operated stores that opened in the last two years

On the list: Store 11525, Chatham Downs, 141 Chatham Downs, Chapel Hill, NC.

The address for the Harris Teeter is 88 Chatham Downs.

There was a discussion and poll about the Chatham Downs Starbucks stores on the bulletin board at
http://chatham-county-nc.com/bulletinboard/index.php/topic,7389.15.html