Signing you in

More than 40 coffees are lined up on the counter waiting to be claimed by customers who ordered on their phones. Baristas are scrambling to keep up, calling out a procession of drinks — cold foam this, nondairy milk that — as office workers crowd into the cramped café. Wedged between the tourist crush of Faneuil Hall and the towers of Boston’s Financial District, the shop is struggling to keep pace. Wait times for a single drink are stretching beyond half an hour.

For years, Starbucks was a fixture of downtown Boston, with locations scattered across its busiest blocks. Now, a wave of closures has left customers crowding into the city center’s last outpost — at 84 State St. — while some former stores sit vacant in prime commercial real estate. The result is a bottleneck for customers and a striking symbol of the coffee giant’s retreat.

The once-ubiquitous chain closed two locations — 125 Summer St. and 8 N. Market St., by Faneuil Hall — in recent weeks, adding to the nearly 20 shops it closed in Greater Boston last year. The closures are part of a larger $1 billion restructuring effort launched last year, as the company shut down hundreds of stores in the US and Canada and laid off 900 corporate employees in an effort to reverse sluggish sales and address complaints over long waits.

For Starbucks, the goal is to keep locations that can still turn a profit. But in downtown Boston, that leaves the question of what happens to the storefronts that didn’t make the cut. Some have been empty for more than a year. One prominent spot: the historic corner building in Government Center where a copper kettle hangs above an entrance.

Chief executive Brian Niccol has said these measures reflect an effort to bring the soul back to Starbucks, by shedding underperforming stores and improving the customer experience at those that remain. But inside that shop on State Street most weekday mornings, that experience can feel more headache-inducing than soulful.

“Starbucks spent two decades behaving like a music artist who parks a dozen tracks on the Hot 100 and then wonders why none of them hit number one: cannibalization,” said Michael Ashley Schulman, a partner at the wealth management firm Cerity Partners, and a Starbucks cafe manager when he was in college.

Closing weaker locations, he said, can push loyal customers toward better-equipped stores nearby, rather than losing them altogether.

Schulman said Starbucks also has pulled back in dense urban areas such as downtown San Francisco, while expanding toward suburban and drive-through formats, where labor and rent can be cheaper.

Mobile ordering, once a convenience for customers on the go, has become another challenge. Employees have to juggle digital and in-person orders, creating crowded pickup areas that even Starbucks founder Howard Schultz has called “a mosh pit.”

The company once built its reputation around the idea of a “third place” between work and home. But it increasingly opened smaller, takeout-oriented locations rather than full-fledged cafes, contributing to over expansion, said William A. Masters, a professor of food policy and economics at Tufts University.

“Those locations turned out to be less profitable than their earlier outlets,” Masters said.

Some former customers, meanwhile, have left for reasons beyond convenience or price.

Starbucks said union status was not a factor in its national decisions; rather, it said closures were based on objective criteria, including long-term performance and customer experience.

“These store closures are being implemented through a thoughtful, lawful process. We used an objective set of criteria, including long-term performance and customer experience,” a Starbucks spokesperson told the Globe in a statement.

The spokesperson did not respond to follow-up questions about the specific Boston-area locations, or its overall strategy for the city.

Sara Osborn, a business analyst who lives in Watertown, said she began boycotting Starbucks last year after labor disputes at stores near her home and workplace. She said she had once been such a regular customer that she kept the company’s vanilla syrup at home.

“I won’t go back to Starbucks until the workers have a contract,” said Osborn, who now pays $20 for a subscription to another company’s cold brew concentrate that gets shipped to her house every two weeks.

Lia Kahan, who works in public health, has also shifted toward independent shops. The Allston resident sees the choice as a way to support local business owners rather than a large corporation.

“We vote with our money,” said Kahan. “I subconsciously judge people when I see them with a cup of Starbucks. It’s meaningful to invest back in Boston, instead of corporations that don’t care about their people.”

But the Boston closures also have left holes in prominent downtown corridors. At the historic steeping kettle building, the chain’s familiar green branding was stripped last fall, but it still maintains the lease and pays rent, according to Ben Ravelson, a partner at Atlantic Retail and one of the space’s listing agents.

Ravelson said there hasn’t been a strong urgency to lease the space by the landlord since Starbucks is still a tenant. “We do have a deal that’s in process, but it’s not signed yet,” said Ravelson. He declined to provide further details on when Starbucks’ lease ends and who the new tenant would be.

Starbucks’ struggles do not mean Boston has run out of coffee customers. Tradesman Coffee Shop & Lounge, which is locally owned, has continued expanding, opening its fourth location near South Station on The Greenway this summer.

Other chains are pursuing prime downtown real estate, including Blank Street Coffee, which has raised more than $105 million in funding. MOTW Coffee & Pastries is slated to open on Broad Street in the Financial District by franchisees who own another location in Shrewsbury. And in other parts of the city, such as the Seaport, more chains have arrived, including Ralph’s Coffee, the luxury cafe by Ralph Lauren.

Since the beginning of 2025, roughly 40 new brick-and-mortar coffee shops have opened across Boston, according to data by the city’s Office of Economic Opportunity and Inclusion. But only a handful have opened downtown.

“Even I have to go sit in the lobby of the [Godfrey] hotel,” Howell said of the hotel connected to his cafe. “It’s always jammed.”

Alexa Gagosz can be reached at alexa.gagosz@globe.com. Follow her @alexagagosz and on Instagram @AlexaGagosz.