Starbucks has announced that it is closing all 379 Teavana stores, impacting 3,300 jobs.
“The company concluded that despite efforts to reverse the trend through creative merchandising and new store designs, the underperformance was likely to continue,” Starbucks said in a press release.
Most locations will close by Spring 2018. In order to preserve their jobs, Teavana employees will be invited to apply to work at Starbucks.
Starbucks purchased the struggling tea retailer in 2012 for $620 million. However, with many American malls struggling to keep up with e-commerce sites, the coffee giant could not save Teavana, forcing it to join the numerous stores, from JCPenney to GameStop, closing down brick-and-mortar locations.
According to an analysis by Fung Global Retail & Technology, there were 5,300 store closing announcements during just the first six months of 2017, triple the number during the same period last year.
Last month, a report from Credit Suisse predicted that between 20% and 25% of American malls would close within five years.
Despite these closures, Starbucks is rapidly expanding. With its stores opening at a rate of one-per-day, it plans to add 240,000 jobs globally over the next five years.
However, most of its expansion has been overseas, especially in China. On Thursday Starbucks announced that it would be making another major investment in China.
