DOWNERS GROVE – Downers Grove's downtown Caribou Coffee will close Aug. 31 and reopen as a Peet's Coffee & Tea on Oct. 27, according to employees.
Barista Rosemary Linn said she and the other staff members are expected to keep their jobs when the store reopens following the remodeling and rebranding work.
The popular downtown cafe is one of a limited number of Caribou's that were not closed and will instead become Peet's Coffee shops.
In 2012, Minnesota-based Caribou was bought by a German holding company for about $340 million. In April the following year, it announced that it would close the majority of its 66 Illinois locations, and convert more than a dozen to Peet's Coffee & Tea shops. Overall, 80 were planned for closure and 88 for conversion, nationwide.
There were Caribou locations in more than a half dozen west suburban locations, including shops in Downers Grove, Wheaton, Glen Ellyn, Willowbrook, La Grange, Oakbrook Terrace and Countryside.
Caribous that were not planned for the conversion into Peet's coffee were closed shortly after the April announcement.
Caribou's transition is the latest change in Downers Grove's chain coffee options.
Starbucks, which has a downtown location directly across the Metra tracks from Caribou, opened its third Downers Grove cafe this summer on Ogden Avenue, and a fourth location was recently approved by the village for Butterfield Road.