Starbucks’ plans to debut a corporate hub in Nashville, Tennessee, are brewing quickly, with the global coffee giant searching for space that could materialize into one of the region’s largest office deals in years.
The Seattle-based chain has put out spatial requirements of about 250,000 square feet, according to people with knowledge of the search. While no deal has been finalized and the company has yet to land on a specific property, those guidelines alone — if fully realized — would inject a boost to Nashville’s leasing volume at a point when the market is rebounding to pre-pandemic levels of demand.
Starbucks is said to be working with CBRE on its Nashville office hunt, which has so far homed in on properties such as the downtown Peabody Union complex. The nearly 300,000-square-foot property at 50 Peabody St. was completed last year and has yet to land a tenant, meaning the coffee chain could potentially take over the entire building.
Neither Starbucks nor CBRE immediately responded to CoStar News’ requests for comment.
The company released plans earlier this month to plant a corporate flag in Nashville that would anchor its growth plans in the South and Northeast United States.
The company will maintain its corporate headquarters in Seattle but is planning to shift its supply chain operations to the future Tennessee office sometime this year. Starbucks executives said they will offer positions to dozens of existing Seattle-based employees to relocate, and the company plans to create additional roles in the Nashville area.
“Starbucks has great ambitions to grow even further across North America, and with these growth plans, we see Nashville, Tennessee, as an ideal location to open an office and establish a more strategic presence in the Southeast region of the U.S.,” Starbucks Chief Operating Officer Mike Grams said in a previous statement. “The city offers a deep, talented and growing workforce, making it a desirable location for us.”
Calculating space
General office space planning traditionally allocates about 125 square feet per employee, according to several brokerage calculations. That figure has fluctuated in recent years alongside shifting hybrid work and economic trends, and often varies across markets and industries.
Starbucks, however, requires employees to show up to an office every day of the workweek, meaning its future space will need to be large enough to accommodate the entirety of its regional workforce.
Based on those spatial allocations and Starbucks’ roughly 250,000-square-foot search, the coffee chain’s future Nashville office could potentially house upward of 2,000 employees.
Starbucks’ Nashville arrival is a significant boost for the region, bolstering its reputation as a logistics, financial and technology hub.
Over the past several years, dozens of Fortune 500 companies, including Oracle, Amazon, Dollar General and FedEx, have planted corporate flags across greater Nashville, attracted by the area’s affordability, diverse job market, business-friendly climate and lifestyle.
That appeal has created a critical backbone for the region’s office market, fueling leasing as well as new construction investments. Net absorption, or the change in space measured by move-ins minus move-outs, totaled more than 1.5 million square feet for the final three quarters of 2025, according to CoStar data, largely driven by companies upgrading their spaces as they increased attendance requirements.
What’s more, almost 2 million square feet of premium office space was completed last year alone, making Nashville one of the most active markets in the country for new development. That also means Starbucks will have a wide pool of options to choose from as it decides where it will ultimately settle.