What Starbucks Store Closures Reveal about Why We Need Places to Belong
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Key Points
- Starbucks is closing approximately 250 North American coffeehouses while continuing to invest in making other locations warmer and more welcoming.
- Sociologist Ray Oldenburg used the term “third place” for informal gathering spaces outside home and work where relationships and community can develop.
- Convenience can improve daily life, but eliminating every point of friction can also remove ordinary opportunities for human connection.
- The church is more than a sociological gathering place; Scripture describes believers as a body that gathers, worships, encourages, serves, and bears one another’s burdens.
- Christians can resist isolation by intentionally lingering, becoming regulars, building relationships, and making themselves known within their churches and communities.
About 20 years ago, there were plenty of jokes about not being able to get away from Starbucks. They seemed to be on every corner. There’s even a scene from The Simpsons where businesses in a mall rapidly turn into Starbucks locations.
Not anymore, I guess.
In late September, Starbucks announced it would close approximately 250 coffeehouses in North America. The company gave two basic reasons. Some locations couldn’t deliver the Starbucks experience, and some weren’t profitable enough.
Fair enough. Starbucks is a business. It can’t operate stores that lose money. But I’m curious about that first reason, because Starbucks has come to be known as more than just a place to buy coffee. It’s an experience.
And that’s what is really interesting to me. Starbucks, it seems to me, is trying to get back to its roots. It’s doubling down on being a coffeehouse.
What Is Starbucks’ “Back to Starbucks” Strategy?
I’m not going to pretend to be an expert on all things Starbucks. I drink Mt. Dew, not coffee. But I’m really intrigued by sociology and business. I find it really intriguing when Starbucks CEO Brian Niccol talks about getting “back to Starbucks”.
That tells me that they thought it had become something other than Starbucks. Starbucks had become a rockstar company at getting coffee into our hands. You can order it before you leave the house, pull through a drive-thru window, or walk inside and grab your drink with the wrong name on it. Sometimes you can complete the whole transaction without even saying much of anything to another human being.
It's convenient. But is that really who Starbucks is supposed to be?
They are trying to recover the welcoming coffeehouse environment where people gather. Many stores have brought back ceramic mugs for people who are staying a while. It returned the condiment bar. The company is spending hundreds of millions of dollars on additional staffing. They’ve also remodeled more than 1,000 stores with softer seating, warmer lighting, artwork, greenery, better acoustics, and more outlets.
They are closing hundreds of stores while at the same time spending money trying to make the remaining stores places where people want to stay. I think that’s telling us something.
What Is a “Third Place” and Why Does it Matter?
It seems that Starbucks is trying to recover what is known as a “third place”. Sociologist Ray Oldenburg popularized that phrase in his 1989 book The Great Good Place. The first place is home. The second place is work. The third place is somewhere else where you regularly spend time with other people. Oldenburg had coffee shops, pubs, diners, barbershops, general stores, and other neighborhood gathering spots in mind.
He recognized some of the thinning out of our culture back in the late 80s. It’s only gotten worse. But Starbucks in the 90s was part of a push against that. The CEO at the time, Howard Schultz, was a big proponent of “third place” thinking. It was what they tried to build. But it seems that somewhere along the way they got away from it.
It was probably technology. Because they still offered that third “place,” but what was happening there wasn’t building community as it once did. Think about what you see in a Starbucks now. There are thirty people in there, but they’ve all got their headphones on, staring at laptops, and not saying a word to anybody.
But even some familiarity here can create a third place. Even if you don’t know that kid with a hoodie and headphones on, you recognize him. There is some interaction there. Someone might notice when you don’t show up. And that can curb loneliness a little.
But they are, it seems to me, trying to recover even more of this. That’s what the softer furniture is for. They’re trying to recover a reason to stay.
What Do We Lose When Convenience Replaces Connection?
We love to optimize and remove friction. We like to get our wait times down to almost zero. Give it to me faster, more easily, and with as little effort as possible. We don’t go to the grocery store; we just have someone drop them at our door and hope they don’t back into the Amazon delivery truck on their way out.
I understand that impulse. I’ve got it too. I mean, if you can get me a robot to also put away my groceries once they are delivered, I will happily participate in the downfall of civilization. I know this stuff is bad for us, because a certain amount of friction is good for us. Inconveniences are often caused by people. And God created people in His image. By removing “friction,” we’re often removing humanity.
We’re losing something when we don’t talk to a cashier anymore. And the million other ways that we’ve lost out on human interaction in the name of efficiently completing transactions. And then we wonder why everybody feels so lonely.
That’s why I’m happy when I see a company like Starbucks confronting some of this. Because if I’m honest, I’m not sure I have the chutzpah to do it myself.
Starbucks isn’t abandoning convenience. They are still giving mobile ordering options. For now, they still have drive-thrus. But it seems like they are pushing back against convenience a little. They’ve realized there is a point where making it easier to leave can make a place less worth visiting. And that will eventually impact your bottom line. That’s when a greedy capitalist will start asking questions they should have asked in the first place.
How can we have convenience without losing community?
I suspect Starbucks isn’t the only one asking that question.
What Can Churches Learn about Community and Belonging?
I don’t think the point here is that Starbucks is failing and therefore we should either start or stop having coffee in churches. This isn’t about coffee. It’s also not entirely about just creating another “third place”. What Oldenburg was talking about was a sociological category. It’s helpful, but it’s not definitive. The church is actually something more.
The New Testament describes something deeper than simply sharing a physical space. Acts 2:42 says the early believers “devoted themselves to the apostles’ teaching and to fellowship, to the breaking of bread and to prayer.” Hebrews 10:24-25 tells Christians not to give up meeting together, but to encourage one another toward love and good works. And in 1 Corinthians 12, Paul describes believers as members of one body who actually need one another.
A coffeehouse can create a third place. The church is something more: a people joined together in Christ.
There is something for us to learn here about efficiency and people. The church can get pretty good at moving people through. Get people parked, kids checked in, start on time (mostly), sing a few songs, preach the sermon, then get everybody out so the next thing can start. If we aren’t careful, we’ll end up in the same place as Starbucks—losing the soul of what we were trying to create in the first place.
Do we still have several connection points where people can actually get to know one another? Or have we become so efficient in our worship “experience” that we’re missing people? Much of what happens at church actually happens around the edges. It’s the conversation you have in the parking lot. Eating together when nobody is in a hurry. Hearing the same story from the guy who has been there since 1982. That’s the stuff of community, and we have to be sure we don’t sacrifice it in the name of removing friction points.
Another lesson is that if you keep making it so smooth and convenient for people to come and go, maybe they’ll eventually just “go”. You can get a coffee anywhere, right? And let’s be honest, these days you can get solid Bible teaching anywhere. Just pull up YouTube, and you can hear a great sermon every day of the week.
But you can’t actually do church or be the church without community. And I think Starbucks is starting to believe you can’t do a coffeehouse with just the coffee.
How Can We Make it Harder to Disappear from One Another?
I hope Starbucks’ “Back to Starbucks” strategy works. Not because I particularly care for their overpriced coffee or bagels (or whatever they serve…again, not a coffee drinker). But I want it to survive because I think places where people gather are really important. Community is a big deal.
And I really do think we should pay attention to them, having spent years figuring out how to get us our coffee faster, and now they are spending a bunch of money trying to make us want to stick around a little longer.
That’s a lesson for all of us, really. Not everything has to be another task. And maybe we should be intentional about making it more difficult to disappear from one another. Perhaps we could help out a little in this project. Instead of going through the drive-thru, head inside and stick around for a moment. It doesn’t have to be Starbucks…but become a regular somewhere.
Sit on a porch again.
Make yourself stick around after church for a few more minutes than you might normally.
Visit a library. Or a park. Or somewhere else that the community keeps showing up. And stay long enough for people to know if you aren’t there.
Frequently Asked Questions
Why Is Starbucks Closing Stores in 2026?
Starbucks announced approximately 250 North American coffeehouse closures after identifying locations that either could not consistently provide its desired coffeehouse experience or did not have a path to acceptable financial performance.
What Is a “Third Place”?
Sociologist Ray Oldenburg used the term for informal gathering places outside home and work where people regularly spend time, converse, and develop community.
Does Starbucks Still Want to Be a “Third Place”?
Yes. Starbucks continues to describe its coffeehouses as places for connection and is redesigning stores with softer seating, warmer interiors, ceramic mugs, outlets, and other features intended to encourage customers to stay.
Why Is Christian Community Important?
Scripture presents believers as members of one body who gather for worship, teaching, fellowship, encouragement, prayer, service, and mutual care.
Can Online Sermons Replace Belonging to a Church Community?
Online biblical teaching can be helpful, but Christian community includes relationships and responsibilities that require more than consuming teaching, including worshiping, encouraging, serving, and bearing burdens with other believers.
For Further Reading
- What Is the Church? Its Purpose and Identity
- Fellowship, Belonging, and What to Do if Your Church Stinks at Both
- What Does the Bible Say about Community?
- Does the Bible Say Christians Have to Attend Church?
- Gen Z Movie Theaters and Shared Experience
Photo Credit: ©Unsplash/Brooke Cagle
Mike Leake is husband to Nikki and father to Isaiah and Hannah. He is also the lead pastor at Calvary of Neosho, MO. Mike is the author of Torn to Heal and Jesus Is All You Need. His writing home is https://mikeleake.net and you can connect with him on Twitter @mikeleake. Mike has a new writing project at Proverbs4Today.
Originally published November 02, 2026.
