SEATTLE — Starbucks is replacing its CEO Laxham Narasimhan with a leader who has a resume filled with food industry experience. And, no, three-time CEO Howard Schultz isn’t coming back again.
Brian Niccol, chief executive at Chipotle, will take over the job in September, six years after he grabbed the helm of at the fast-Mexican-food chain and steered it into the digital age.
Under Niccol’s leadership, Chipotle started taking advantage of its mobile app by introducing grab-and-go ordering options, a rewards program and more digital marketing.
By 2021, Chipotle had more than 22 million customers in its database, Niccol wrote in the Harvard Business Review: “We’re gathering information to better understand what motivates them to come into a restaurant to eat or to place and pick up an order, and how we can encourage them to do both more often.”
Niccol, 50, also said he helped fix another part of Chipotle’s reputation: The company was infamous for food poisoning outbreaks. In the wake of its 2015 food safety issues, Chipotle had been promoting local buy-one-get-one deals to bring customers back.
“It was a very defensive, expensive, promotion-focused approach, and giveaways weren’t what the brand needed,” he said. “So we shifted our marketing spend to social media and television, where our message has become much more resonant.”
Niccol arrived at Chipotle from Taco Bell, where he started as chief marketing officer before taking the CEO role at the Yum! Brands-owned company. On his watch, Taco Bell expanded its menu to include breakfast and, just like at Chipotle, launched mobile ordering.
“I believe he is the leader Starbucks needs at a pivotal moment in its history. He has my respect and full support,” Schultz said in a statement Tuesday.
Niccol has an engineering degree from Ohio’s Miami University and an MBA from The University of Chicago. His wife, Jennifer Niccol, also graduated from Miami.
Niccol takes over after six disappointing months for Starbucks in which sales dipped and an expected turnaround never materialized. The company’s quarterly revenue declined in the first quarter of this year for the first time since 2020. The next quarter, revenue fell again.
Investors seem convinced Niccol can reverse that decline; the company’s stock price jumped 25% Tuesday.
“Brian is a culture carrier who brings a wealth of experience and a proven track record of driving innovation and growth,” Starbucks board chair Mellody Hobson said in a news release Tuesday. “Like all of us at Starbucks, he understands that a remarkable customer experience is rooted in an exceptional partner experience.”
Unlike his predecessor, it appears Niccol won’t go through six months of CEO-shadowing and barista training.
