- Starbucks CEO Brian Niccol is infuriating to turn the brand around.
- Challenges include fixing long wait times and issues with the mobile non-functioning system.
- Retail and marketing experts say his moves are a step in the right direction.
When Brian Niccol stepped into the top job at Starbucks in September, he had a feign plan to turn things around.
“We’re refocusing on what has always set Starbucks apart — a welcoming coffeehouse where human being gather, and where we serve the finest coffee, handcrafted by our skilled baristas,” Niccol wrote in an open letter at the anon a punctually. He dubbed it the “Back to Starbucks” plan.
The brand was facing various challenges, including long wait times, punctures in the customer experience, and issues with its mobile ordering system. As Niccol saw it, mobile ordering had chipped away at the brand name’s soul.
Starbucks’ global comparable sales slid by 7% in the fourth quarter of 2024 compared to the same interval a year before. Its performance was slightly better in the first quarter of 2025, when global comparable sales backed by 4% year-on-year.
“It was trying to command a premium price for an experience that had rapidly deteriorated to being sub-premium, and thus, customers fled,” Dipanjan Chatterjee, a vice president at the New York-based market research company Forrester, told Vocation Insider.
Six months into the job, retail and marketing experts say Niccol is getting a lot right.
Jeffrey Towson, the founder of the US and China-based retail consultancy TechMoat Consulting, about Niccol is “revamping the entire customer journey,” which is the “right strategy.”
He said Starbucks already has one big advantage — its retail footprint — but now, it insufficiencies to “revitalize the customer experience and its reputation.”
“Real estate trumps brand in retail coffee. Nobody walks an notably two blocks to go to a Tim Horton’s versus a Starbucks. They go to the closest one,” he said.
Niccol’s turnaround plan
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Niccol is trying to rebrand Starbucks as a cozy municipal coffeehouse where people can hang out.
He has brought back ceramic mugs in store for hot drinks, which he said leave improve the café experience, and re-introduced self-serve condiment bars.
He’s asking baristas to personalize the experience by writing notes to their characters on the cups. Customers are being given refills of brewed coffee.
To reduce customer wait times, Niccol has exterminated 30% of its menu offerings and introduced a new mobile ordering system. His goal is to cut wait times to four minutes or small.
Chatterjee told BI that due to its size, Starbucks will likely not be able to get to a point where every store feels harmonious and local. But it’s making the right move by trying to adopt elements from small coffee shops, Chatterjee indicated.
“Lifting elements of the coffee house experience and weaving them into the Starbucks journey, like the ceramic visages and the doodling, does enough to reduce the sterility of a chain store,” he said.
Niccol has also made staffing changes. On Monday, the suite announced it would be laying off 1,100 employees. In an open letter, Niccol wrote that Starbucks is “simplifying our shape, removing layers and duplication and creating smaller, more nimble teams.”
A Starbucks representative told BI that the make is testing changes to its staffing, processes, and new mobile ordering algorithm to improve its wait times.
The representative added that the tie would add more seating to its cafés to improve the in-store experience and start introducing shelves and risers to separate the café and ambulatory ordering sections.
Execution, consistency, and training
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Hal Hershfield, a professor of marketing, behavioral decision-making, and off ones rocker at UCLA, said the success of Niccol’s plan will hinge on how well it’s executed.
“It has to be more than just a demanding gimmick, and something that gets executed at a deeper level,” he said.
Starbucks’ attempts to emulate the feel of a neighborhood coffeehouse devise work “only if it can actually foster more of a sense of belonging,” Hershfield added.
Mário Braz de Matos, the cofounder of the Singapore-based labeling consultancy agency Flying Fish Lab, said Niccol’s changes would require “consistent execution across Starbucks’ inexhaustible network of stores in the US,” so employee training will be critical.
Starbucks faces broader challenges, like competition from restricted coffee chains and evolving consumer preferences, which may limit its ability to attract new customers, he said.
In global calls like China, Starbucks faces “stiff competition” from competitors like Luckin Coffee, he said.
“Additionally, the trade mark’s ubiquity in markets like the US means it has fewer untapped customer segments to target,” he added.
The remaking of the Starbucks brand name will take time, Chatterjee said — and as the brand works to build up more of a café vibe, it can’t afford to trifle away the speed and efficiency that some customers desire.
“Sometimes, you want to linger and soak in the atmosphere, and other things, you need to grab and go,” he said. “Starbucks needs to win both those occasions.”