Brian Niccol
CEO
2024 – Present
2 years (current)
Key Decisions & Impact
Niccol joined Starbucks as chairman and CEO on September 9, 2024, after leading Chipotle since 2018, where he built a reputation for operational turnarounds. Within his first month he published an open letter launching the 'Back to Starbucks' plan, built on four pillars: improving the employee experience, cutting wait times, elevating the in-store experience, and rebuilding the brand's story. Under the plan, Starbucks brought back seating, simplified an overloaded menu, and shifted marketing away from mobile-order speed toward the cafe as a gathering place.
Legacy
A year into the plan, Niccol and outside analysts pointed to early signs of a turnaround, including improved traffic trends off 2024 lows; he has cited a widely shared Reddit thread about interview experiences as evidence the changes were landing internally, not just in marketing. The plan remains unproven at scale -- fiscal 2025 net revenue grew only modestly to about $37.2 billion -- but it marked a clear break from the mobile-order-led strategy of his predecessors. Wall Street responded positively enough to the early results that some analysts began describing the turnaround as ahead of schedule by mid-2025.