Starbucks is asking workers to move to Nashville. It’s not going well

This week, Starbucks unveiled plans to open an office in Nashville, in a bid to establish a home base in the Southeast. The coffee giant is investing $100 million in this expansion and plans to staff the new office with thousands of workers within the next five years. But according to a new Bloomberg report, Starbucks has had little success coaxing employees to relocate from the company’s headquarters in Seattle. 

Starbucks eventually plans to have about 2,000 employees based in Nashville. In a letter to employees that was also posted publicly, chief partner officer Sara Kelly disclosed that the Nashville office would be staffed with some new hires—but that certain teams would be asked to relocate from Seattle, including a number of tech roles. 

So far, the company has apparently struggled to convince existing employees to move: Bloomberg reports that in March, the 100-person sourcing team at Starbucks was given the option to either relocate with a pay cut, or give up their jobs. (They were initially given less than a month to make a decision, according to the report.) Employees were not enthusiastic about the offer, and the situation has reportedly impacted morale and trust among team members.

Starbucks has also tried to persuade other employees to move with financial incentives—from stock grants worth tens of thousands of dollars to a $2,000 travel stipend for anyone entertaining the offer who wanted to visit Nashville. (When reached by Fast Company, Starbucks was not immediately available for comment.)

Starbucks leadership did not explicitly acknowledge this reticence in the public memo. “We are excited about this phase of growth for our talent and the company,” Kelly wrote. “We also recognize that announcements like this can raise questions. We’re committed to communicating as decisions are made in the next couple of months and will keep you updated so you have the facts and hear updates directly from Starbucks.”

The company also cited “proximity to key suppliers” and “access to a deep and growing talent pool in the region” as the rationale for opening the new office, along with future plans to open new locations. 

If this messaging sounds familiar, that’s because it is not unlike the approach some companies took when they asked employees to return to the office in the years after the pandemic. Many major employers, from Amazon to JPMorgan Chase, expected people to come back into the office multiple days a week, with few exceptions, even in cases where they had relocated in the intervening years. Starbucks itself had mandated that employees work out of either Seattle or Toronto (though CEO Brian Niccol had initially commuted to work via private jet).

Other employers, like Walmart, have also forced workers to not only return to the office, but relocate entirely to another state. In 2024, the company asked thousands of workers in smaller offices to relocate to Walmart’s corporate headquarters in Bentonville, Arkansas, where a new 350-acre campus was being constructed. The move was reportedly met with reluctance when it was first proposed, not unlike the reaction elicited from Starbucks employees today. (Walmart has since claimed that most employees ultimately agreed to move rather than leave the company.) 

It’s hardly surprising that workers might be resistant to this kind of upheaval. In the last few years, many people uprooted their lives to comply with return-to-work policies, only to get laid off not long after, as companies started making significant cuts to their head count. And as employers double down on AI—and use it as an excuse to cut more jobs—workers are likely to continue pushing back on requests for them to relocate with little notice.

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