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NEW YORK (AP) - Starbucks Corp. on Wednesday told about 1,370 employees that their jobs will be cut as the gourmet coffee company sheds costs by closing stores and laying off employees.

About 500 non-store employees in the United States and Canada, including 300 in the company's Seattle headquarters, and 870 assistant store managers learned their jobs were disappearing, the company said.

Starbucks said it is offering some of the affected employees other jobs. Those who leave Starbucks will be offered severance pay, benefits and help finding another job.

In an e-mail to all employees, Chet Kuchinad, an executive vice president, said the layoffs are necessary given the economy and "critical to ensuring we have a sustainable and successful business going forward."

Employees not being laid off will meet with leaders over the next week to "map out" Starbucks' future, he said.

The layoffs come after the company in January announced the results of its fiscal first quarter and said it would cut up to 6,700 jobs to lower costs by closing more stores.

For the quarter ended Dec. 28, U.S. same-store sales - or sales at stores open at least a year - dropped 10 percent. The dip was steeper than most Wall Street analysts expected.

The company said then that, in all, it would trim about 700 non-store employees and up to 6,000 store employees, including baristas and store managers as stores close.

Starbucks plans to close 300 stores in the U.S. and overseas this year in addition to more than 600 underperforming U.S. stores it began closing last summer.