Hyde Park’s 55th Street Starbucks closed its doors for good last Saturday, one of more than a dozen Chicago locations shuttered as part of a nationwide restructuring by the coffee giant.
The Seattle-based coffee corporation announced last Thursday that it would shutter one percent of U.S. stores and lay off 900 nonretail employees this month. The closures, which affect about 400 stores, and the corporate layoffs are part of a $1 billion plan to turn around the company, which has struggled in recent years with falling profits amid inflation and consumer shifts.
“I am puzzled, because it’s always so busy,” said Eva Nielsen, a Hyde Park resident, on the eve of its closure.
“We heard that this one was going to stay open, so we’re bummed out,” added her husband, Mike Danforth.
As of press time, the company has not released a full list of the closures. The Sun-Times reports that at least 14 Chicago stores closed this past weekend, three of which were unionized, including the Hyde Park location. That location unionized in June 2022, joining a nationwide wave of organizing in Starbucks cafes. Months later, the company fired a union organizer at the shop, a move the National Labor Relations Board later found to be illegal, along with threats to workers’ benefits and raises.
The union, Starbucks Workers United, represents more than 12,000 baristas at 650 stores across the country, 30 of which are in the Chicagoland area.
About a year and a half after affiliating with Starbucks Workers United, the Hyde Park cafe was shuttered for a month and remodeled as a pickup-only location. Once a popular destination for nearby University of Chicago students, the redesigned cafe removed all of its tables and seating, forcing customers to take their drinks and food to go.
In the closure announcement, the company noted that is on track to have 18,300 Starbucks locations in North America by the end of this fiscal year.
CEO Brian Niccol told employees in a memo on Thursday that the closures target stores where Starbucks “cannot create the physical environment our customers and partners expect, or where we don’t see a path to financial performance.” He said the company is working to transfer employees to other cafes and will offer severance to those it cannot.
Three Starbucks locations remain in Hyde Park, at 1530 E. 53rd St., 1346 E. 53rd St. and 5757 S. University Ave.
As Nielsen and Danforth picked up their coffees, a barista at the 55th Street Starbucks said, “I only found out today.”
Marc C. Monaghan contributed reporting.