The former Chipotle executive is seeking to return the coffee chain to its core coffee offering, particularly in the US, where baristas have reported being overwhelmed by expansive menus and customers have faced longer wait times
Former Chipotle CEO Brian Niccol has taken the helm at Starbucks and pledged to recentre the US coffee giant as a ‘welcoming coffeehouse’ by reducing menu complexity and improving customer experience.
Writing to the coffee chain’s employees, customers and stakeholders, Niccol said conversations from his initial visits to Starbucks’ US stores had indicated to him that the business had ‘drifted from its core’.
Niccol, who was announced as Starbucks CEO in August 2023, will spend his first 100 days in the role visiting more US outlets to devise a strategy to reverse two successive quarters of declining sales and footfall. He said his initial priorities include empowering baristas, improving in-store efficiency across the coffee chain’s 16,730-store US footprint and re-establishing Starbucks as ‘the community coffeehouse’.
“Many of our customers still experience this magic every day, but in some places – especially in the US – we aren’t always delivering. It can feel transactional, menus can feel overwhelming, product is inconsistent, the wait too long or the handoff too hectic. These moments are opportunities for us to do better,” Niccol wrote.
On Starbucks’ 86 international markets, Niccol said the company will target improvements in China and the Middle East – countries where the Seattle-based business has suffered from increased value-focused competition and customer boycotts.
“In China, we need to understand the potential path to capture growth and capitalise on our strengths in this dynamic market. Internationally, we see enormous potential for growth, especially in regions like the Middle East, where we’ll work to dispel misconceptions about our brand, and in Asia Pacific, Europe and Latin America, where the love for Starbucks is strong,” he said.
Niccol is the sixth CEO to lead Starbucks – the world’s largest coffee chain with 39,500 sites across 87 markets globally. He succeeds Laxman Narasimhan after Starbucks parted ways with the former Reckitt Benckiser executive after less than 18 months in charge.
