Twin Cities Starbucks stores are closing, but the company has not said which or why. It is not surprising that Starbucks is closing local stores, as new CEO Brian Niccol announced a large-scale reorganization earlier this year coinciding with now six consecutive quarters of declining same-store sales. But Niccol’s announcement on Sept. 25 that the company was cutting corporate jobs and closing stores was not accompanied by locations, nor has any subsequent information been released.

The closings seem to have been motivated by two concerns: poor sales and/or an inability to control the quality of the customer experience. “During the review, we identified coffeehouses where we’re unable to create the physical environment our customers and partners expect, or where we don’t see a path to financial performance, and these locations will be closed,” Niccol wrote in his memo, as reported by Fast Company.

Niccol’s stated vision for Starbucks includes a less volume-oriented, transactional approach to business, focusing on hospitality and an improved in-store experience, which had become heavily oriented toward online order pickups.

A Reddit forum and linked Google sheet identified more than 400 U.S. closings, including a handful in the state. Downtown Minneapolis locations in City Center and Canadian Pacific Plaza would seem to represent the poor-sales category. City Center’s primary tenant was Target, who left its space in the building during the pandemic. Starbucks had previously announced plans to close stores that existed only to serve digital orders, which would include that store and the one at 26th and Nicollet. The Hennepin store frequently had homeless individuals begging or passed out at the store’s entry and occasionally camped out in the store itself. That location was surely also affected by the street’s construction closure since April, although its parking lot remained accessible from a side street.

Starbucks also closed a store on South Snelling in St. Paul and another in Roseville on Twin Lakes Parkway. Starbucks also appears to have closed its only standalone store in Red Wing and a two-year-old store in the Staybridge Suites in central Rochester. All have disappeared from the Starbucks app.