SEATTLE — Starbucks plans to lay off 224 employees tied to its Seattle headquarters, according to a Worker Adjustment and Retraining Notification (WARN) filed Thursday with the Washington Employment Security Department.
The permanent separations affect workers at or reporting to the Starbucks Support Center, also known as SSC Headquarters, at 2401 Utah Ave. in Seattle. The expected date of the first separations is Oct. 19, with all separations completed by Nov. 1. The affected employees are not represented by a union, and none of the employees have any bumping rights.
Approximately 120 of the separations reflected in the notice are associated with employees who were offered the opportunity to continue their employment by transferring to the Starbucks office located in Nashville, Tennessee, but declined the opportunity to relocate. The remaining approximately 104 positions are associated with organizational changes resulting from the restructuring work the company announced in May 2026.
Those laid off included multiple directors, numerous managers and senior managers, program managers, project managers, real estate representatives and portfolio advisors, store design leads, store designers, store design coordinators, systems analysts at various levels, systems engineer leads, technical product managers including principals, application developers and leads, architects, decision scientists, engineers, software quality assurance analysts, scrum masters, administrative assistants, and two vice president positions.
The latest notice follows earlier 2026 reductions at the Seattle headquarters, including 61 technology positions disclosed in a May filing with separations beginning in June, and 252 support-center roles announced later that same month with separations beginning in July. Combined, those earlier actions accounted for 313 corporate jobs cut at the Seattle headquarters this year before the current filing.
Starbucks has said the moves are part of broader efforts under Chief Executive Officer Brian Niccol to streamline operations and achieve $2 billion in cost savings by the end of its 2028 fiscal year. T
The latest action aligns with Starbucks’ expansion of a Southeast support office in Nashville, a $100 million investment expected to house up to 2,000 jobs over five years. Seattle remains the company’s global and North America headquarters. The Nashville site is intended to serve as a complement focused on growth in the South and East, supply chain functions, technology roles, and other support operations.
This latest round of reductions at the Seattle Support Center brings the documented corporate job cuts in 2026 to 537.
Author: Mario Lotmore
