Starbucks is laying off 224 more workers tied to its Seattle headquarters, according to a new state filing. The coffee giant says the layoffs don’t represent a new round of cutbacks, but rather the lingering effect of restructuring work announced earlier this year.
About 120 of the 224 are employees who were offered roles in Starbucks’ new Nashville office and declined to relocate, according to the filing. Those roles are expected to be filled in Tennessee.
The remaining 104 in the notice filed Thursday stem from the restructuring that Starbucks announced in May, and fall largely within the group that designs, sites and builds its coffeehouses.
Not all 224 are based in Seattle. The filing covers employees who work at or report to Starbucks’ headquarters at 2401 Utah Ave. S., so some are located elsewhere in the country while reporting to managers at the Seattle campus. Starbucks did not say how many are based in Washington state.
The reductions are part of the “Back to Starbucks” turnaround CEO Brian Niccol launched after taking over in September 2024 — an effort that has paired store-level technology upgrades and a simplified menu with a restructuring of the company’s corporate ranks.
Starbucks has now laid off 537 corporate workers tied to its Seattle headquarters this year, across three state filings: 61 in a tech reorganization in May, 252 at the support center later that month, and the 224 disclosed this week.
Starbucks is targeting $2 billion in cost reductions over two years under Niccol, and has shed more than 2,300 corporate jobs companywide since last year, according to Bloomberg.
At the same time, Starbucks is building out its Nashville office, a $100 million investment expected to house 2,000 support jobs within five years. The company has said the majority of its corporate teams will remain in Seattle.
The design and development cuts come later than the rest of the May restructuring because the executive who leads the group, Stephen Piacentini, joined Starbucks from Chipotle in April, and the organizational changes in his group weren’t finalized when the May restructuring was announced.
Editor’s note: This story has been updated to clarify that the 224 workers covered by the filing report to Starbucks’ Seattle headquarters but not all are based in Seattle.
