Customers will miss Starbucks Barista's last day is Friday

If it were within his power, John Carr would buy a Starbucks and keep it in his hometown.

He laughed out loud when he described how much he liked drinking his white chocolate mocha with caramel. He visits the barista often.

The woman who poured his hot drink knows him by his first name. She handed him his steaming cup and wished him a good day.

"Bye, bye dear," answered Carr as he pushed open the door.

The Starbucks at the Publix Plaza is scheduled to close Friday night. Carr knew he would be back a few times before then, otherwise his farewell almost certainly would have been more somber.

"I feel like it should stay," the Brooksville native said. "(Starbucks) didn't even give it a chance. It was here maybe two years."

The city's busiest intersection - U.S. 41 and State Road 50 - includes two grocery stores, a Subway, a laundry business, two pharmacies, a movie rental business, an Applebee's and much more. All of them combined do little to change the small town feel of Brooksville.

Starbucks, on the other hand, gave the city a dash of urban flavor. It was something many native Brooksvillians craved because they had never had anything like it before. Those who moved here liked it because it reminded them where they came from.

"I'm very unhappy," said Michael Natale, who was sipping a regular coffee with his friend, Candido Ponce. "I come here about two or three times a week. Now where am I going to go?"

There is another Starbucks at the Coastal Way Shopping Center, approximately six miles west along Cortez Boulevard. Natale knew that. He's already decided he wouldn't make the trip.

"Yeah, that's in Spring Hill," he said as he shook his head. "I'm not driving all the way down there for a cup of coffee."

The coffee shop, with its New York Times newsstand, background music, comfortable seating and proximity to the grocery store reminded Natale of his native Long Island, N.Y.

His friend, Ponce, is originally from Cuba. He has been around coffee his whole life. What he gets at the local diner or donut shop doesn't compare.

"I'm going to miss the ambience of this place," he said. "Sometimes I sit here and I read the paper ... I'll drink a coffee and get a bagel or something.

"You go to Dunkin' Donuts and you've got to deal with kids," Ponce continued. "They sell ice cream over there, too. It's just not the same."

Starbucks closed approximately 600 baristas last summer, including 59 in Florida and six in the Tampa area. Both Hernando County locations were spared.

Sometime later, the store at Coastal Way ceased being a 24-hour operation and the company announced it would close 300 more "underperforming" stores after a fourth-quarter slump in 2008.

Employees were told of the Brooksville store closing weeks ago.

A call to the Starbucks media line was not returned Friday. The two working behind the counter that afternoon said they were not permitted to speak to the media.

"With all the new development here in Brooksville, you'd think they'd want to stay," said Jason Campbell, a Homosassa resident who works in Brooksville.

He admitted he was one of the regular customers who wrote a letter to the corporate office beckoning executives to keep the store open.