Trouble brews for Starbucks; 600 store slated to close

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For a decade it appeared there was no such thing as too many Starbucks for U.S. coffee drinkers, whose willingness to buy its $4 lattes and dark drip brews rationalized a second green-and-white mermaid awning just down the street - and sometimes even a third.

Now those days of a Starbucks on virtually every corner are numbered.

Starbucks plans to close 600 stores, or 19 percent of its stores, in the U.S. in the next year and cut back the number of new stores it had planned to open.

About 12,000 workers, or 7 percent of Starbucks' global work force, will be affected by the closings, which are expected to take place between late July and the middle of 2009, spokeswoman Valerie O'Neil said. Starbucks says it will try to place workers from closed stores in remaining Starbucks.

It is unknown if Topeka's Starbucks will be affected. Starbucks won't be making the list of closing stores public. A Starbucks spokeswoman said concerns citizens should ask their local Starbucks clerks.

The coffee purveyor says 70 percent of the stores set for closure had opened since the start of the 2006 fiscal year. The total includes 100 previously announced closings.

Currently in Topeka, KS

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