Starbucks will lay off nearly 2,000 employees at its stores in the Middle East and North Africa.

AlShaya Group, the retail giant that owns the right to operate Starbucks in the Middle East, released a statement on March 6 saying that the company has decided to reduce the number of employees in Starbucks' MENA stores due to the continued severe trading conditions over the past six months.AlShaya confirmed that the scale of the layoffs is nearly 2,000 people. Alshaya, which is headquartered in Kuwait, is said to operate more than 1,900 Starbucks stores in Bahrain, Egypt, Jordan, Kuwait, Lebanon, Morocco, Oman, Qatar, Saudi Arabia, Turkey and the UAE. $Starbucks(SBUX.US)$