Starbucks To Close 4 Long Island Teavana Stores By 2018

The tea party is over. Starbucks announced Friday that it is pulling the plug on all of its nearly 400 Teavana retail stores nationwide, including four on Long Island, due to "underperformance."

Starbucks began its mission to introduce people to tea aromas, flavors and varieties after purchasing Teavana for $620 million in 2012. The mission, however, seems to have been a bad investment.

The following Long Island stores will be closing:

• Garden City— in the Roosevelt Field Mall, located at 630 Old Country Road
• Huntington Station— in the Walt Whitman Mall, located at 160 Walt Whitman Road
• Bay Shore— in the South Shore Mall, located at 1701 Sunrise Highway
• Lake Grove— in the Smith Haven Mall, located at 313 Smith Haven Mall

The majority of the closing stores will close by spring 2018. Starbucks says the employees impacted by the closures will be able to apply for positions at Starbucks stores.

Starbucks called the Teavana stores "persistently underperforming" in a statement issued to investors on Thursday:

As reported on the Q2 call, many of the company’s principally mall-based Teavana retail stores have been persistently underperforming. Following a strategic review of the Teavana store business, the company concluded that despite efforts to reverse the trend through creative merchandising and new store designs, the underperformance was likely to continue. As a result, Starbucks will close all 379 Teavana stores over the coming year, with the majority closing by Spring 2018. The approximately 3,300 partners impacted by these closures will receive opportunities to apply for positions at Starbucks stores, as Starbucks remains on track to create 240,000 new jobs globally and 68,000 in the U.S. over the next five years.

Be sure to pick up free samples at the Long Island locations before they close for good.

Teavana stands for "heaven of tea."

Reporting by Brandan Krisel

Image via bargainmoose/Creative Commons