Earlier this month in Starbucks: A Study in Liberal Failure, I discussed how the liberal views of its ownership was causing Starbucks to begin to fail, despite the fact that it sells one of the most over-priced products the world has ever seen. Today we have an update from Business Day:
ALMOST 700 employees of the coffee chain Starbucks will lose their jobs on Sunday after the company yesterday announced the closure of 61 of its 84 Australian stores.
Starbucks employees were told of the closures during 28 meetings around the country. They were given little more than 24 hours' notice to attend and were not told the reason for the meetings.
The American company admitted it had struggled in Australia's "very sophisticated coffee culture" and said the announcement was unrelated to its closure of 600 stores in the US this month.
A friend of an employee who learned he had lost his job said: "It's just disgusting the way Starbucks have handled this. They were left in the dark until the last minute. And they won't say anything because they're worried they won't get the [redundancy] money."
The coffee giant admitted that, since arriving in Australia eight years ago, simply not enough people had walked into its stores.
Unrelated or not, it is a sign of further failure by the coffee giant.
Andrew Mackay, vice-president of the Australian Coffee Traders Association, said the milk and syrup-based stores - where customers had to line up to be served - were never going to thrive. "I just think the whole system, the way they serve, just didn't appeal to the culture we have here."
So Starbucks, the bastion of multiculturalism, couldn't adapt to the culture of the Australian people. How funny.
In its statement late yesterday, Starbucks said the decision to close 61 "underperforming" stores was made "to concentrate its attention and resources on profitable growth, operational efficiencies and an enhanced experience for customers and partners globally". Starbucks calls its employees "partners".
Mr Culver said: "Obviously a decision like this is a very difficult decision for any company to make and really more so from a Starbucks perspective because of the impact that we have on our people."
It had set up an "employee assistance line" offering counselling to "partners". Packages would be offered to all full-time and casual staff. He declined to say why they were given such short notice but they would receive payouts in lieu of the notice. Some would get up to 20 weeks' pay and all would get two weeks' severance pay.
20 weeks' pay or two weeks severance pay, from a job making coffee? I'm guessing Starbucks' real partners, its shareholders, are spewing java over that one.
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