Starbucks is laying off 224 workers, including 120 who declined to relocate from Seattle to its new Nashville office and 104 from the team overseeing store design and construction.
The company said it would begin its separations from Oct. 19, with all departures finalized by Nov. 1.
Starbucks said the layoffs mark the end of its global restructuring announced in May. The restructuring involved eliminating 252 corporate positions. The latest round was disclosed in a Worker Adjustment and Retraining Notification filed with Washington state regulators.
The 104 store design and construction roles were eliminated following a leadership reorganization on that team. The remaining 120 workers lost their jobs after they turned down the offer to relocate to Nashville, according to Bloomberg. Starbucks will be opening a new corporate office in Nashville by 2027.
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Early relocation efforts faced resistance. Bloomberg reported that while some were offered stock grants worth tens of thousands of dollars, they were also told their pay would be cut by at least 5%, with the company citing lower living costs in Nashville. Employees who chose not to relocate were offered retention packages starting at $15,000, contingent on staying with the company into at least 2027.
The cuts represent a small portion of the company’s global workforce of 381,000 people as of September 2025, according to Starbucks’ fiscal 2025 annual report.
This layoff is the eighth Washington layoff the company has done over the past two years, according to the state’s WARN database. 2,538 employees were laid off during that period.
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Starbucks’ layoffs were announced soon after current CEO Brian Niccol took over the company. In Niccol’s first month on the job, the company laid off 974 non-retail employees as part of Niccol’s goal to reduce “non-retail headcount and expenses,” he wrote in a September 2025 statement.
In May, Starbucks announced that it will cut 300 corporate jobs in the United States and also begin reviewing its international corporate workforce. Earlier in February 2025, Starbucks announced plans to eliminate 1,100 jobs and leave several hundred positions unfilled. Months later, the company revealed another 900 job cuts for nonretail employees as part of a broader $1 billion restructuring plan.
Niccol has been planning to cut $2 billion in costs over two years. This reportedly includes closing underperforming locations and selling a stake in its China business.