The local job market
AJC business reporters closely monitor the local jobs market, paying particular attention to corporate locations here as well as those that are relocating outside the metro area.
Two years after buying homegrown Atlanta tea brand Teavana for $620 million, coffee giant Starbucks is relocating the company to its base in Seattle.
Many of the company’s 99 employees will either move to Seattle when the relocation begins in October or follow in the next two years after winding down operations here, Teavana President Annie Young-Scrivner said Thursday. Some positions will be eliminated altogether, she said, though she declined to say how many.
Despite being part of Starbucks, Teavana, known for its premium loose-leaf teas, had retained its corporate headquarters in Buckhead.
“One of the big reasons we acquired Teavana is the talent of Atlanta,” Young-Scrivner said. But she added that the move will help the company leverage a larger talent pool and broaden its knowledge base as it tries to ramp up growth.
Economist Tim Mescon said losing Teavana is not a stain on metro Atlanta’s reputation. The area has many more wins than loses, he said, wooing NRC Corp. to Gwinnett County and keeping Atlanta as the headquarters for Delta Air Lines after the company merged with Northwest Airlines.
“There has always been a risk that (Teavana) would move after Starbucks acquired them,” said Mescon, president of Columbus State University. “There was no reason that Starbucks had to keep them in Atlanta.”
Teavana’s move west brings to an end the Atlanta chapter of the company’s story, which began when creators Andrew and Nancy Mack — using their life savings — opened the first location on Peachtree Road in Buckhead in 1997.
“Coffeehouses have done so much to raise people’s awareness of coffee,” Mack told The Atlanta Journal-Constitution months after opening the couple’s first store. “We want to do the same for tea.”
When the sale to Starbucks was announced in late 2012, Teavana had just opened its 300th U.S. store, as well as its first overseas location in Kuwait.
Starbucks said at the time of the deal that its goal in buying Teavana was to do for tea what it did for coffee.
Young-Scrivner said the change in location is “part of the natural progression” for the company. Young-Scrivner, who also is an executive vice president at Starbucks, has been president of Teavana for four months.
She said she did not have any discussions with Atlanta leaders about the move, saving employees were her first concern.
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