Starbucks cafes are closed from 2pm today as staff has been summoned to attend a meeting.
An anonymous email sent to the Sydney Morning Herald last night claimed that store managers had to close their stores from 2pm to attend the meeting where they would be told if their outlets were to remain open or be closed.
It is not known how many Sydney stores will be closed or if it will be all stores or all Australian outlets. The company operates 85 stores in Australia of which more than two dozen in Sydney.
The news comes only four weeks after Starbucks announced it would close 600 stores in the US, slashing up to 12,000 jobs.
According to the SMH, the company said 70 per cent of the cafes slated for closure had opened after the start of 2006. The chief financial officer, Pete Bocian, said that meant Starbucks would close 19 per cent of all US company-operated stores that opened in the past two years. He said a Starbucks store’s revenue dropped 25 to 30 per cent when a new one opened nearby.
Starbucks opened its first Australian store in Sydney in 2000.