Starbucks Closes 3 Out of 4 Australian Stores

Starbucks, the world's largest coffee chain will tomorrow announce which 61 out of 84 Australian stores are to close.

On the chain's official website, www.starbucks.com the company issued this statement;
Starbucks Coffee International, a wholly-owned subsidiary of Starbucks Coffee Company today announced plans to restructure its business in Australia through a geographical refocus on three core cities and surrounding areas: Brisbane, Melbourne and Sydney. This decision will result in the closure of 61 locations throughout the country by August 3, 2008...

These closures will result in the loss of 685 job losses for Australians.

This announcement comes weeks after Starbucks announced the 600 stores to be closed in America, in an attempt to "Improve its performance.".

Howard Schultz, Starbucks' US founder and chairman had this to say on the Australian closures, “While this decision represents business challenges unique to the Australian market, it in no way reflects the strong state of Starbucks business in countries outside of the United States.”

The failure of the Starbucks empire in Australia has been correlated to Australia's coffee culture, brought to the continent by Italian immigrants years ago.

"One challenge has been that, as we've expanded into the remote locations, we haven't seen the foot traffic sustain those stores. I think what we've seen is that Australia has a very sophisticated coffee culture." says John Culver, president of Starbucks Asia Pacific.

The 61 stores will be closed by the end of the week.