If you enjoy strolling downtown Kelowna and popping into Starbucks on Bernard Avenue for your favorite beverage, we have bad news for you.
At the end of the weekend, this Starbucks location on the corner of Bernard Avenue and Pandosy Street will finally close its doors.
This doesn’t come as a surprise as the company announced just 16 days ago that it would close hundreds of stores across Canada in the first half of 2021.
The company is accelerating a five-year store transformation strategy that prioritizes drive-through locations.
A downtown Kelowna Starbucks employee confirmed to KelownaNow that he believed the site would be closed because it was too dependent on pedestrian traffic.
While a business that relies on pedestrian traffic will certainly have suffered in the past few months, it doesn’t help that there are two Starbucks drive-thru locations along Highway 97, both just a mile from downtown.
There is also another Starbucks just two blocks away in downtown Safeway.
All employees at the downtown location, which is being closed, have been moved to other stores in the Kelowna area.
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