October Rundown: Starbucks Spends $150K Per Store While Your Grid Funding Disappears

This month’s got the full spread: Starbucks’ ambitious refresh program, a Pittsburgh hospital saving millions by leaning into data, Target doubling down in San Antonio while quietly ditching Ulta from 600 stores, $7.6 billion in federal energy funding vanishing overnight, and construction workers so scarce they’re beating national unemployment for only the third time in two decades. Some of this you can learn from. Some of it you just need to know is coming. All of it matters if you’re planning anything past next Tuesday.

Starbucks’ Ambitious Refresh Program: 1,000 Cafes by Late 2026 

After years of prioritizing mobile orders over in-person, Starbucks CEO Brian Niccol wants customers back in-store and will spend $150,000 per store to make it happen. The goal is to refresh 1,000 locations by the end of 2026 by bringing back generous seating, local design touches, and that “third place” vibe Starbucks traded for efficiency. Some NYC and Southern California stores already got the treatment, and thousands more will follow.

The Uplift: Sofas, Texture, and a Mea Culpa

Niccol slowed new builds and major renovations to fund what the company calls its “uplift” program, which translates to replacing the thousands of seats Starbucks ripped out in recent years. Each refreshed cafe gets warmer textures, a layered design, and layouts tailored to the local community, all with minimal downtime. The company also plans to sunset its mobile order-and-pickup-only concept in fiscal 2026 because, as Niccol admitted, it felt “overly transactional” and lacked the warmth that defines the brand. 

Early Results: People Are Staying Longer 

Early results from the refreshed locations prove what many already knew: Give people a comfortable place to sit, and they’ll stick around. Customers at the updated NYC and Southern California stores are visiting more often, lingering longer, and leaving positive feedback. Starbucks is also testing a new prototype coffeehouse with 32 seats and a drive-thru that costs 30% less to build, plus a smaller 10-seat format opening soon in New York City. Turns out, couches and community still matter.​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​

When Hospitals Get a Brain Scan: UPMC’s Data-Driven Facilities Revolution

Most hospitals treat their buildings like background scenery. UPMC in Pittsburgh treats them like patients. Michelle Kirk, senior regional director of facilities engineering and maintenance, led her team to change the face of the building’s facility management by turning scattered data into cold, hard cash and healthier spaces. And they’re just getting started.

The Digital Diagnosis Room

Kirk spotted the gold mine during her job interview. UPMC already had a command center and logistics operation center working away, but nobody had connected the dots. Her team pulled data from building automation systems across 10 facilities and funneled everything into a single fault detection platform, almost like creating a medical record for every piece of equipment. AI algorithms scan the compiled data and flag critical maintenance tasks before problems snowball. Temperature and humidity controls in surgical areas are monitored as complete snapshots instead of waiting for alarms to scream. And once Kirk loops in all remaining UPMC facilities by 2027, she projects cutting energy costs between $14 million and $18 million.   

Teaching Old Buildings New Tricks

The platform also moonlights as a training academy for technicians who skipped college and went straight to the field. It guides them through real-time troubleshooting and decodes what each component does when things go sideways. It’s a significant benefit considering healthcare departments face constant budget cuts and pressure to do more with less. No wonder it only took Kirk one demo to sell executives on the whole program.

Target Doubles Down in San Antonio With Another $4.1M Store Refresh

Target just filed for a $4,169,049 renovation at its SW Military Drive location in San Antonio. But here’s what caught our attention: It’s the second store within seven miles getting the same refresh treatment.  

Moving Fast With 40,000 Square Feet of Updates

The SW Military Drive project kicks off April 27, 2026, and wraps by late July, covering 40,000 square feet inside and out. Think LED lighting installations, revamped beauty and apparel sections, upgraded order pickup and drive-up zones, touchless restroom features, a nursing space, and dedicated areas for Target’s Apple and Disney partnerships. Target’s other store on SE Military Drive gets matching upgrades finishing in August 2026, while San Marcos scores a $15 million overhaul wrapping in mid-July 2026. Target’s even building an entirely new store in the metro area in 2027, its first fresh build in San Antonio since 2012. 

The Ulta Exit Creates a Real Estate Puzzle Worth Solving

What’s also fascinating? Target is ditching its Ulta Beauty partnership in August 2026, right when these renovations finish. Those 600 mini Ulta spaces that launched in 2021 suddenly need new life, and Target’s already making room for bigger Apple and Disney footprints in these refreshed stores. The timing lines up too perfectly to be a coincidence. You’re watching a retailer swap out partnership space during major capital projects without missing a revenue beat.​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​

When the Funding Tap Runs Dry: Your Facility’s Grid and Energy Bill Take the Hit

The U.S. Department of Energy just pulled the plug on $7.6 billion worth of funding for 223 clean energy projects across 16 states. And these weren’t pie-in-the-sky proposals either; they were competitively selected projects already underway, ranging from grid reinforcement initiatives to hydrogen hubs. The immediate fallout may hit you faster than you think.

Jobs Today, Headaches Tomorrow

Work stoppages and layoffs hit first, according to Zealan Hoover, former senior adviser to the EPA and now principal at Torrey Growth & Income Advisors. The terminations affect major infrastructure plays like California’s hydrogen hub (losing $1.2 billion) and the Pacific Northwest regional hub (dropping up to $1 billion), but they also kill off critical grid reliability projects from the Grid Deployment Office that strengthen local power infrastructure. Colorado stands to lose more than $500 million across 30+ grants as Illinois watches $280 million in methane prevention and grid resiliency funding evaporate. Projects that could have stabilized your local grid and locked in competitive energy rates now face cancellation.

The Price You’ll Pay at the Meter

Hoover puts it plainly: Expect a less competitive electric power sector, higher energy costs, and diminished grid reliability. In other words, you need to be on top of your facility planning. Those grid modernization projects that would have reduced outage risks and smoothed demand spikes won’t happen. The hydrogen infrastructure that could have offered alternative fuel sources gets shelved. Colorado’s Energy Office warns the cuts will balloon energy costs and threaten grid stability, and create business uncertainty that makes long-term facility planning a guessing game.   

Hard Hats Harder to Find: Construction Jobless Defies Trends

Federal funding cuts might complicate your project pipeline, but good luck staffing those jobs anyway. Construction unemployment hit 3.9% in August while the national rate sat at 4.3%; it’s only the third time in more than 20 years that construction workers have had a lower unemployment rate than the average American.  

Your Talent Pool Shrunk Overnight

Construction unemployment used to spike higher than national averages during downturns. Not anymore. Recent ICE enforcement actions removed workers from an industry that relied on immigrant labor to fill gaps. Electricians, plumbers, ironworkers, and masons also remain scarce while contractors compete for the same workers. Wages climb, project costs follow, and staffing jobs efficiently becomes exponentially harder. Seasonal hiring patterns might offer temporary relief heading into winter, but demographic shifts and fewer people entering vocational training programs point to problems ahead.

Your Budgets and Timelines Need Recalculating

Your budgets need bigger labor line items, and your timelines need extra padding because workforce availability now sits alongside material shortages as a primary risk you can’t ignore. Smart contractors are building apprenticeship programs and betting on prefabrication to reduce the number of bodies they need on site. Others are throwing money at technology and hoping productivity tools bridge the gap. Either way, you’re spending to solve a problem that won’t fix itself. 

Work Smarter with BrandPoint

Starbucks is throwing $150K per store to right some wrongs, hospitals are beating facilities teams at their own game with data, and you’re about to budget for projects in a market where construction labor is scarcer than it’s been in 20 years. As one provider with many solutions, here’s how we can help at BrandPoint Services:

• Facility Maintenance: National contractor network and dedicated account teams managing your work orders across every site. You’ve got better things to do than chase down vendors that don’t show up.
• Fixtures and Merchandising: Floor layouts, custom shelving, and fixture installations that optimize your space and move product. Twenty years of knowing what works versus what just photographs well.
• Seasonal Maintenance Planning: We cover audits, coordination, tech integration, and emergency protocols, because your HVAC system will absolutely fail during peak season if you don’t assume it will.
• Total Cost of Ownership Optimization: Portfolio-wide visibility that kills the constant site-by-site firefighting. Make decisions based on actual data instead of whoever’s yelling loudest today.
• Retail Event and Traffic Readiness: Peak season prep covering safety protocols, incident response, and operational readiness. Your stores need to handle Black Friday traffic without falling apart or creating liability nightmares.

Connect with BrandPoint Services today. We handle the vendor coordination, contractor management, and execution so you can focus on business strategy instead of chasing invoices.