CEO Dan Schulman keeps shrinking the payroll and the corporate store count. The retail network is now mostly run by someone other than Verizon.
Verizon is cutting about 3,000 jobs and selling 274 corporate-owned stores to franchise operators, effective August 16. Roughly 500 of the cuts hit corporate staff, and the rest come from the store transfers. After the deal, Verizon keeps about 1,000 company-owned stores and leans on franchisees to run the other 5,000-plus.
Dan Schulman took the Verizon CEO seat last October with a promise to build a simpler, leaner, scrappier company. Nine months in, the jobs he has cut number more than 16,000. Thursday’s announcement is the latest piece of a plan to run the biggest US wireless carrier with a lot less of its own overhead.
What Happened
Verizon told employees Thursday it will transfer 274 company-owned retail locations to independent franchise operators on August 16. Six large operators, who already run most of Verizon’s franchised stores, are buying them. The stores stay open and keep the Verizon branding. They just answer to a franchisee instead of headquarters.
The move affects about 3,000 workers. Around 500 are corporate positions Verizon is eliminating outright. The rest work in the stores being sold, and their jobs move off Verizon’s payroll. Verizon points out that in past transfers, about 70% of affected store employees took jobs with the new owners.
Verizon employed roughly 89,900 people at the end of 2025. After August 16, it will operate about 1,000 corporate stores and rely on franchisees for the roughly 5,000 Verizon-branded outlets they already run.
The Backstory
This follows a bigger cut. Last November, Schulman eliminated more than 13,000 nonunion jobs, about 20% of that workforce, in the largest single layoff round in Verizon’s history. That round also handed 179 corporate stores to franchise operators. A smaller wave in May trimmed several hundred more positions.
Schulman joined Verizon’s board in 2018 and took the CEO job in October to reverse a growth slump. US wireless is a mature market. Verizon, AT&T, and T-Mobile fight over mostly the same customers, and winning a subscriber usually means paying for it with device subsidies or plan discounts. Growing the top line is slow and expensive, so Schulman has gone after the cost base instead.
There are early signs the customer side is stabilizing. Verizon posted its first positive first-quarter net gain in postpaid phone subscribers since 2013. The company reports second-quarter results on July 24.
The Plan
An internal memo reviewed by The Wall Street Journal spells out the target: keep at least 1,000 corporate-owned stores for the next three years, and franchise the rest. That number is the floor Schulman’s team decided the brand needs to control directly.
Around the store shuffle, Schulman is reshaping the product. Verizon dropped activation and upgrade fees last month and launched a rewards program for existing subscribers. He is also betting on automation to cut service costs. “AI will take over a large percentage of the work that customer service representatives currently do,” Schulman said, framing it as a way to improve the experience rather than just trim headcount.
The Business Model Angle
Verizon is running an asset-light retail pivot. A corporate-owned store carries fixed costs Verizon pays every month regardless of sales: the lease, the staff, the utilities. Franchising those stores moves that weight onto someone else’s books. The franchisee signs the lease, hires the workers, and buys the inventory. Verizon collects margin through the wholesale and dealer arrangement without carrying the storefront on its own P&L.
Keep about 1,000 flagship corporate stores and franchise the other 5,000-plus, and Verizon ends up directly operating roughly 16% of its own branded retail. The other 84% runs on franchise economics. For a business that sells the same connectivity as two well-funded rivals, this is how you defend profit when you cannot grow volume fast: you shrink what you pay to sell it. Pair that with AI handling more service calls, and Verizon is attacking two of its largest labor costs at once, retail and support.
The corporate stores that remain are not random. They anchor high-traffic markets and high-value transactions, the places where Verizon wants to control the pitch and the brand. Verizon’s business model has always leaned on network quality to justify premium pricing. Flagship stores protect that premium. The long tail of neighborhood locations does not need to.
The Risk
Handing 84% of your storefronts to franchisees means handing them your customer experience. A shopper does not know or care whether the store is corporate or franchised. They see a Verizon sign. If franchise service slips, the brand takes the hit, and in a market where switching carriers is easy and cheap, a bad in-store experience shows up as churn.
The AI bet cuts the same way. Replace a chunk of human support with automation, and you save real money, but you risk frustrating customers who then shop AT&T or T-Mobile. Verizon’s whole pitch is that it charges more because it is better. Cheaper service that feels cheaper undercuts that story.
The deeper issue: this is defense. Cutting more than 16,000 jobs in under a year protects margins, but it does not fix the growth stall that got Schulman hired. Cost cuts have a floor. At some point Verizon has to sell more, not just spend less. The marketing rebuild around simpler pricing and rewards is the growth half of the plan, and it is less proven than the cost half.
Quick Questions
How many jobs is Verizon cutting? About 3,000, of which roughly 500 are corporate positions. The rest are store workers whose jobs move to franchise owners.
Are the 274 stores closing? No. Six franchise operators are buying them and keeping them open as authorized Verizon stores.
When does it take effect? August 16, 2026.
How many stores will Verizon own afterward? About 1,000 corporate-owned stores, plus roughly 5,000 franchise-operated locations it does not own.
Who is driving this? CEO Dan Schulman, who took the job in October 2025.
The Business Model Analyst Take
Schulman is executing a clean cost-transformation playbook: externalize fixed retail costs to franchisees, automate service with AI, and hold a core of corporate stores to protect the brand. On the numbers, it works. Verizon lowers its operating leverage in a market where the top line barely moves, and the 274 stores keep selling Verizon plans without Verizon paying to run them.
The bet underneath it is whether a mostly franchised, AI-served customer experience still feels like a premium product. Verizon charges more than T-Mobile because it promises better. Every corporate store it sells and every service rep it replaces trims cost and chips at that promise. Get the balance right and Verizon is a leaner business with the same premium. Get it wrong and it becomes an expensive carrier with a discount-carrier experience, which is the worst seat in a saturated market. The July 24 earnings call, and whether that postpaid subscriber turn holds, will say a lot about which way this is breaking.
Reporting from The Wall Street Journal, Reuters, and Bloomberg.
