“After nearly a one-year assessment of the Ohio market, we’ve decided to focus on our top-performing locations and reduce our scale in this area,” company spokeswoman Amy Lester said. The two Dayton-area stores and five other Ohio stores targeted for closing “have not performed to our expectations and didn’t have a promising future outlook,” Lester said in an email.
Lester said each Peet’s location has about 15 employees.
“Our Peet’s employees are important to us and we’re helping them through this transition, including a two-week notice on what’s happening,” she said. The employees will be given a severance and benefits package based on tenure, including tenure at Caribou, she said.
In addition to the two Dayton-area stores, two Columbus-area and three northeast Ohio Peet’s shops will close Aug. 3.
Tom Smith — founder of Ashford Construction & Development Company in Centerville and owner of the Far Hills Avenue property leased by the Peet’s — said the coffee shop’s management has been told the shop will close as a Peet’s-affiliated location, but he said there is a chance the shop will be rebranded and will reopen with an affiliation with another coffee-shop chain.
Lester said she had no information about a re-branding or a successor coffee shop at the site.
A German company, Joh. A. Benckiser Group, bought both Peet’s Coffee & Tea and Caribou Coffee in 2012, spending a combined $1.3 billion for the two companies.
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