Starbucks Begins to Close Westside Locations, Beginning With Store on 15th and Montana.

Starbucks coffee company has begun to close locations on the pricey Westside. A sign in the window at the 15th and Montana Avenue location says the store will not reopen after Covid-19 ends.

The letter says that the store will be closing permanently. It refers patrons to the locations on 11th and Wilshire, 26th and San Vicente, and 7th and Montana Avenue. It is signed by Michael Haddad, District Manager.

Some experts expect the lockdown to continue on and off throughout 2020. The lockdowns are not exactly supportive of local real estate prices, so the publicly traded company may have calculated, that if it wants to open another location on Montana Avenue someday, it can simply lease it again later for less rent.

Starbucks has no less than 30 locations in Santa Monica, an 8 square mile city. This includes six locations inside of markets.

The company operates 30,000 locations worldwide in over 77 countries, as of early 2020. Starbucks locations serve hot and cold drinks, whole-bean coffee, microground instant coffee known as VIA, espresso, caffe latte, full- and loose-leaf teas including Teavana tea products, Evolution Fresh juices, Frappuccino beverages, La Boulange pastries, and snacks including items such as chips and crackers; some offerings (including their annual fall launch of the Pumpkin Spice Latte) are seasonal or specific to the locality of the store.

Headquartered in the Starbucks Center, the company was founded in 1971 by Jerry Baldwin, Zev Siegl, and Gordon Bowker in the Pike Place Market. During the early 1980s, the founders onboarded Howard Schultz as their directer of retail operations and marketing. Schultz, after visiting Milan, Italy, opened a specialty cafe that merged with Starbucks in the late-1980s. His first tenure as chief executive, from 1986 to 2000, led to an aggressive expansion of the franchise, first in Seattle, then across the West Coast.