Starbucks to Stop Selling Newspapers
GoLocalProv Business Team
Starbucks to Stop Selling Newspapers
Starbucks did not give a reason for the change, but said it would also remove shelving fixtures.
Jordan Cohen, a spokesman for The Times, said in a statement, “Although disappointed by the decision, we’re confident that given our wide retail distribution, readers will have no trouble finding The New York Times for sale at nearby outlets.”
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Last September, GoLocal reported that the East Side Mart, the convenience store located in the Elmgrove Avenue retail strip in one of Rhode Island's most affluent and highly educated neighborhoods has stopped carrying the Providence Journal — it has carried the paper for more than 40 years -- since the 1970s.
“We Have That! Eastside Mart pretty much has everything!” is the store’s motto for Paul Smith and his family who have owned the store since 2007.
It is the neighborhood 'go-to' spot to pick up some milk, buy a lottery ticket, grab a pint of premium ice cream, and up until the past month, buy a newspaper.
“Realistically, we were doing about $2000 a month in papers, but in the past, we did $4000. We had just the ProJo and the New York Times. We were getting seven copies of ProJo and seven of the Times -- at those numbers, they weren’t even selling out. Previously, we used to have ten a day and those we weren't selling out [before we cut down],” said Smith, owner of the Mart.
For newspapers, the hope for the future is that highly educated and affluent consumers will continue to buy the paper version.
For residents in the neighborhood — the Blackstone neighborhood — the median household income is $127,000 a year.