Market Data 
- Starbucks CEO Brian Niccol is trying to turn the brand around.
- Challenges include fixing long wait times and issues with the mobile ordering 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 game plan to turn things around.
“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,” Niccol wrote in an open letter at the time. He dubbed it the “Back to Starbucks” plan.
The brand was facing various challenges, including long wait times, flaws in the customer experience, and issues with its mobile ordering system. As Niccol saw it, mobile ordering had chipped away at the brand’s soul.
Starbucks’ global comparable sales slid by 7% in the fourth quarter of 2024 compared to the same period a year before. Its performance was slightly better in the first quarter of 2025, when global comparable sales decreased 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 hence, customers fled,” Dipanjan Chatterjee, a vice president at the New York-based market research company Forrester, told Business 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, said 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 needs to “revitalize the customer experience and its reputation.”
“Real estate trumps brand in retail coffee. Nobody walks an extra two blocks to go to a Tim Horton’s versus a Starbucks. They go to the closest one,” he said.
Niccol’s turnaround plan
Niccol is trying to rebrand Starbucks as a cozy local coffeehouse where people can hang out.
He has brought back ceramic mugs in store for hot drinks, which he said would improve the café experience, and re-introduced self-serve condiment bars.
He’s asking baristas to personalize the experience by writing notes to their customers on the cups. Customers are being given refills of brewed coffee.
To reduce customer wait times, Niccol has eliminated 30% of its menu offerings and introduced a new mobile ordering system. His goal is to cut wait times to four minutes or less.
Chatterjee told BI that due to its size, Starbucks will likely not be able to get to a point where every store feels unique and local. But it’s making the right move by trying to adopt elements from small coffee shops, Chatterjee said.
“Lifting elements of the coffee house experience and weaving them into the Starbucks journey, like the ceramic mugs and the doodling, does enough to reduce the sterility of a chain store,” he said.
Niccol has also made staffing changes. On Monday, the company announced it would be laying off 1,100 employees. In an open letter, Niccol wrote that Starbucks is “simplifying our structure, removing layers and duplication and creating smaller, more nimble teams.”
A Starbucks representative told BI that the brand is testing changes to its staffing, processes, and new mobile ordering algorithm to improve its wait times.
The representative added that the chain would add more seating to its cafés to improve the in-store experience and start introducing shelves and risers to separate the café and mobile ordering sections.
Execution, consistency, and training
Hal Hershfield, a professor of marketing, behavioral decision-making, and psychology 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 marketing gimmick, and something that gets executed at a deeper level,” he said.
Starbucks’ attempts to emulate the feel of a neighborhood coffeehouse will 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 branding consultancy agency Flying Fish Lab, said Niccol’s changes would require “consistent execution across Starbucks’ vast network of stores in the US,” so employee training will be critical.
Starbucks faces broader challenges, like competition from local coffee chains and evolving consumer preferences, which may limit its ability to attract new customers, he said.
In global markets like China, Starbucks faces “stiff competition” from competitors like Luckin Coffee, he said.
“Additionally, the brand’s ubiquity in markets like the US means it has fewer untapped customer segments to target,” he added.
The remaking of the Starbucks brand will take time, Chatterjee said — and as the brand works to build up more of a café vibe, it can’t afford to lose the speed and efficiency that some customers desire.
“Sometimes, you want to linger and soak in the atmosphere, and other times, you need to grab and go,” he said. “Starbucks needs to win both those occasions.”
