The permanent closing of four Starbucks locations in Cambridge and Somerville at the end of their Saturday hours led residents to find alternatives for their caffeine fix, with local coffee shops getting a shot at filling the demand.
The closings include the Elm Street location in Somerville’s Davis Square; and, in Cambridge, one at Massachusetts Avenue and Shepard Street near Lesley University; a “Grab & Go” location at the epicenter of Harvard Square at 1 JFK Street; and one on First Street in East Cambridge.
Just across from the closed Davis Square location is Somerville favorite Diesel Café, where employees say business has been strong over the past few days.
“It was, what I felt like, busier than usual,” said Diesel barista Alexey Mozyaev, although he hedged that September does tend to be a busy month overall, with local college students back in town. Before the interview, he was not aware the Starbucks had closed; other baristas said over the weekend that they too were uncertain if they were feeling a Starbucks surge, or just another busy day in the last gasp of warm summer weather.
A barista at the Pavement Coffeehouse, a Boston-area chain of eight shops, confirmed that the Lesley University location has been especially busy since the closing of the Shepard Street Starbucks across Massachusetts Avenue. The abruptness of the closing was notable, they said, but could not comment further due to company policy restrictions regarding employees speaking to the media.
Harvard Square Business Association executive director Denise Jillson said trying to assess the impact of Starbucks’ closing in Harvard Square is futile. “We have so much good coffee,” Jillson said. “It’s just going to be absorbed,” she said of the Starbucks customer base, rattling off a list of surrounding shops including Flour, Tatte, Blue Bottle, Bluestone Lane, Blank Street and the George Howell coffee bar inside Lovestruck Books. (Not to mention Faro, the Luxor, Black Sheep Bagel, Peet’s, Cardullo’s, L.A. Burdick, Blackbird Doughnuts and, of course, Dunkin’ Donuts.)
The Shepard Post was one of the the original Coffee Connection stores run by local roaster George Howell that was taken over by Starbucks in the mid-1990s, when the Seattle company came to town and looked to challenge the cherished local coffee chain.
The weekend shutdown was part of a nationwide restructuring for the popular chain, referred to by it as a “Back to Starbucks” strategy to make locations more customer friendly. Elements include “enhancing the in-store experience with the return of the condiment bar, writing on cups, more ceramic mugs and a revised code of conduct.” The closings affected more than 400 U.S. and Canadian stores, including more than 20 in Massachusetts.
Now most of the chain’s locations that remain locally are in hotels, grocery stores and food courts. But its locations have been changeable for years, and this isn’t the first time Starbucks has played the hokey-pokey in Harvard Square. It had three coffee shops in the square once, including a flagship two-story, late-night spot that closed in late 2021. There was none for all of a year until a reopening in a then-new Abbot building, while a Blank Street Coffee claimed Starbucks’ former foot-traffic real estate on the plaza outside an MBTA subway headhouse.
Crime was blamed for the 2022 closing of a Starbucks in Cambridge’s Central Square. A Dunkin’ Donuts opened in the space last year.
Tom Meek contributed to this report.
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I’m old enough to remember when the Starbucks in Davis opened! The word on the street then was that they’d opened across from the Diesel specifically to put it out of business and get more market share. They had opened a larger space than Diesel had at the time, with more amenities like free WiFi. (This was their strategy in a lot of areas: find local popular coffee shop, open across the street, offer big discounts and big amenities, put local coffee shop out of business, cut back on amenities and discounts.) At one point, they had a permit for outdoor seating but Diesel couldn’t get one, which was a competitive advantage in good weather.
If that was the Starbucks strategy, I’m glad it didn’t succeed. (I’ll be interested if there is another old timer out there with any more info on this.)
Starbucks, as most people know, has a long-standing reputation of being anti-union and generally treating its employees pretty badly.
I was appalled when Starbucks opened in Central square, right across the street from a local coffee shop and more appalled still when it seemed to do pretty well.
On top of that, their industrial approach to cafe design and coffee brewing made for p;retty mediocre coffee, and the interiors felt completely corporate and generic.
I find it hard to understand how people could be at all wistful for their departure.
I must admit that I welcome this news.