Starbucks CEO, Brian Niccol, promises a return to the golden age of Starbucks

It’s no longer a treat to go to Starbucks. And it hasn’t been in a long time.

The coffee chain has become a sloppy, expensive utility, more eager to get you out than invite you in. As a customer, I feel both used by the corporation and a little guilty for the company’s overworked frontline employees. 

And in a brilliant first memo from Brian Niccol, the new chairman and CEO of Starbucks (who hails from Taco Bell and Chipotle), he promises that “we’re getting back to Starbucks.” 

“There’s a shared sense that we have drifted from our core. We have an opportunity to make the store experience better for our partners and, in turn, for our customers,” he says. “It can feel transactional, menus can feel overwhelming, product is inconsistent, the wait too long or the handoff too hectic,” he later adds. “These moments are opportunities for us to do better.” 

Starbucks is not Chipotle, nor is it Taco Bell

Color me surprised! I’ll be the first to admit that I had some hesitancy about Niccol’s appointment as chairman and CEO of Starbucks. It’s not that his CV isn’t up to snuff; it’s that the Chipotle he left shares many of the same problems that Starbucks faces today. Tl;dr, the soulless pile of burritos awaiting customers at a Chipotle during the lunch rush looks remarkably similar to the slush of drinks at a Starbucks during breakfast. 

At Chipotle, Niccol infused the fresh burrito company with efficient digital workflows, making it easier to get a burrito without waiting, and driving its profitability to new heights. It wasn’t so different from what he did at Taco Bell. (Meanwhile, Starbucks invented many of these digital processes years before.) 

Chipotle’s digital focus on loyalty programs and to-go orders came at a cost of Chipotle’s core customer experience. And, in fact, after I published a story on Niccol’s track record at Chipotle, I was surprised when a former insider at the company reached out, unprompted, to confirm this precise trade-off the company had made.

Now, were he there another year, I have little doubt that Niccol would have needed to circle back on some of Chipotle’s core competencies: the relationships between the employees and customers, the feeling of value and appreciation, the product as an item meant to be savored rather than simply consumed, the restaurant as a place to sit and not just as a fancy container for a line.

I say that, now, with more confidence, because that’s exactly what his inaugural memo is suggesting for Starbucks. Which isn’t what we expected at all. Between building a digital Chipotle and introducing french fries at Taco Bell, it seemed like Niccol might turn Starbucks into a full-on fast food coffee house. Starbucks seemed on the precipice of becoming the Mcdonald’s drink spin-off CosMc’s. But now, Niccol seems to be proposing exactly the opposite. 

The return of the third place?

It’s often said that Starbucks invented the third place; the spot that was neither home nor work, but a place in between to kill time or meet with friends. But it would be more accurate to say they commercialized the third place. If you don’t go to the library or church, well, there’s always a Starbucks around the corner. 

Starbucks, during its cultural heyday in the mid-aughts, invested heavily in the fit and finish of its stores, crafting experience through environment (remember this Starbucks on a train?)—which proved popular not just in the U.S., but for countries across Asia, where homes are often too tight for having friends over comfortably.  

But even while it’s opened whimsical factory stores, Starbucks has eroded the third place for years, prioritizing mobile ordering to eliminate lines while shrinking its store footprints (to the point that some don’t even have seats). The entire fast food and fast casual industry, inspired by Starbucks’s initial success, has since followed suit, eliminating amenities as simple as chairs and tables to maximize profit per square foot. (In 2023, we called this alarming trend the death of a place to sit.) 

It’s hard to believe we’ve lost so much so quickly. And as a result, when Niccol says, “we’re refocusing on what has always set Starbucks apart—a welcoming coffeehouse where people gather,” it now feels like a radical thought. People want to go to a restaurant that feels nice?!? They might want to order a thing they eat there?!? They might want to hang out!?

Any innovator will tell you that if your industry zigs, it’s time to zag. The opportunity to break out is never found in doing things the same way as your peers. In fact, Niccol’s memo is right in line with Starbucks founder Howard Schultz’s own assessment, when in May of this year, he lamented the death of the third place at Starbucks, calling for a “maniacal focus on the customer experience” and “being experiential, not transactional.”

Niccol arrives at Starbucks during a time when dusting off the old playbook feels new, if he can modernize it in just the right ways to keep a chain with 38,587 stores worldwide in balance. Of course, keeping that balance is key.

While Niccol’s topline conclusions feel dead-on, reading between the lines, it’s easy to imagine how he’s picturing a different Starbucks than the one we have today.

“We’re refocusing on what has always set Starbucks apart—a welcoming coffeehouse where people gather, and where we serve the finest coffee, handcrafted by our skilled baristas.”

Translation: We’ve got too much crap that’s not coffee.

With this passage, I want you to focus on “where we serve the finest coffee.” It couples perfectly when, earlier in the memo, Niccol suggests the Starbucks menu feels “overwhelming.” Starbucks offers 170,000 ways to customize a drink alone. Rainbow drinks have helped the company go viral. But tamping down the wildly complicated, ever-shifting concoctions will allow the Starbucks staff to home in on coffee.

“Our stores will be inviting places to linger, with comfortable seating, thoughtful design and a clear distinction between ‘to-go’ and ‘for-here’ service.”

Translation: Everyone shouldn’t be eating from the same trough.

Niccol is pulling on our heartstrings with promises of the comfy seating of a 1990s coffee house. I’m here for it. But he is also suggesting that both the store format and service design need to change. There are two types of customers at Starbucks: those who stay, and those who leave. They are different. And a big part of highlighting that difference will be in how you grab your drink. Starbucks is promising to do better than a big pile of drinks on the counter.

“Empowering our baristas to take care of our customers: We’ll make sure our baristas have the tools and time to craft great drinks every time, delivered personally to each customer…”

Translation: We need more hands.

Niccol may not be suggesting that Starbucks needs to actually hire more people, but anyone reading this has seen the skeleton crew manning a modern Starbucks, desperately trying to keep up with the morning rush. The barista “tools” could also imply new, more efficient equipment—keep in mind that Niccol introduced a guacamole and burrito bot at Chipotle—but the promise of “delivered personally to each customer” doesn’t feel like the job of a robot.

Utimately, it’s hard to imagine how Niccol can promise more time and service without expanding Starbucks’s 400,000 staff, even with a simpler menu. Because no matter what you attempt to do with design, nothing can care for a person like another person.

Niccol’s plan sounds right, but as I carry the 1s and 0s in my head, I’ll admit that I’m confused how he will pull this off while making Wall Street happy. If selling more drinks, faster, isn’t the answer for Starbucks, then it might mean these lovingly, hand-crafted drinks will get even more expensive. Which would be another, less welcome page out of Niccol’s playbook.