Tea time’s over for Starbucks Coffee’s Teavana stores in South Florida.
The Seattle-based coffee giant announced it would shutter all of its 379 Teavana stores by the spring of 2018. In South Florida, that includes nine locations at the Village of Merrick Park in Coral Gables, Dolphin Mall in Miami, the Falls in Miami, at 8000 Broward Boulevard in Plantation, Sawgrass Mills in Sunrise, Coral Square in Coral Springs, Town Center at Boca Raton, in Palm Beach Gardens and in Wellington.
The stores had been “strategically underperforming,” Starbucks’ president and CEO Kevin Johnson said during an earnings call Thursday. They’ll close by next spring, according to the Sun Sentinel.
Starbucks bought the tea company for $620 million in 2012, but despite “creative merchandising and new store designs, the underperformance was likely to continue,” the company said in a third-quarter earnings report. In January, Starbucks said it planned to convert its three New York City Teavana locations into Starbucks stores.
On Thursday, Starbucks said it will shell out $1.3 billion to buy out its joint venture partners in its East China business. [CO] – E.B. Solomont and Katherine Kallergis