Starbucks' Expansion Finally Ends

The Starborg Collective-- You will be assimilated finally halted, but quite deep into Federation Space, partly by the economic downturn, partly because there are now six Starbucks for every man, woman, and child in the United States.

Starbucks Corp. announced Wednesday that fiscal first quarter profit fell 69 percent as revenue dipped. The company also plans to close more stores, eliminating up to 6,000 jobs.

The coffee chain operator posted fiscal first quarter earnings of $64.3 million or 9 cents a share, much lower than the $208.1 million or 28 cents a share earned in the same period the year before.

Starbucks took a $75.5 million restructuring charge in the quarter for costs related to store closures. Excluding those costs the company earned 16 cents a share.

Revenue fell as well, down 6 percent to $2.62 billion from $2.77 billion last year. Same-store sales dipped as well, down 9 percent in the quarter.

The results were short of analyst estimates for earnings of 17 cents a share on $2.7 billion in revenue.

The company said it will close an additional 300 underperforming stores to go along with the 600 previously announced.

I take a lot of shots at Starbucks. I don't mean to take one here, really when I say that for the thousandth time, a franchise caught a bit of a craze and overexpanded too much and too quickly.

I'm just surprised it took this long, and that they had, quite literally, some blocks in which competing Starbucks faced each other from across the street.

posted by Ace at 11:23 PM

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