The Edmond Sun

Business

Discussion

July 18, 2008

UCO plans new campus coffee location

EDMOND — BY COURTNEY CRAUTHERS

THE EDMOND SUN

Starbucks recently announced that it will close 600 stores nationwide, including two Edmond stores.

Customers that frequent the locations at 2015 W. Danforth near Santa Fe and 2141 W. 15th St. near Santa Fe soon will have to find an alternative coffee fix. The majority of the stores will close gradually during the remainder of 2008 and the first half of 2009. The two Edmond stores are among 15 Oklahoma locations that will be closed.

“In January, we committed to transforming the company through a series of critical and strategic initiatives to improve the current state of our U.S. business and build the business for the long term,” Starbucks CEO Howard Schultz stated in a press release. “Our executive and field leadership teams conducted an extensive review of our U.S. company-operated store portfolio with a goal of enabling our organization to focus its efforts on locations where we can more effectively improve the customer experience.”

According to a press release, these teams identified locations that “were not profitable at the store level and not projected to provide acceptable returns in the forseeable future.”

Erin Tharp, 19, said she solely buys her coffee at the Starbucks on Second Street.

“I’d be really sad if that one closed. I go there everyday. It’s so much of our culture right now,” she said.

Tharp said while the closings of the two locations don’t really affect her routine, it might be annoying if her current coffee place became busier as a result.

“I’d still go there but I wouldn’t go as much,” she said. “I like having space.”

However, the UCO community soon will have another Starbucks option. Rick Vega, director of the UCO Nigh University Center, said they previously sold Starbucks brewed coffee in the center. Starbucks soon will add a complete store in the same area they used to sell their Starbucks brewed coffee.

“It will be just like a traditional Starbucks in the building,” Vega said.

He said he recently went to a Starbucks that was in a hotel he was staying at and it was just like drinking coffee in the store down the street.

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