Niccol was brought on with just three weeks left in Starbucks’ fiscal year, which ended on Sept. 29, 2024. That quarter, the chain posted a 6% decline in comparable sales in North America, the third-consecutive quarter of comp sales dips.
Niccol’s initial task as CEO was to turn around Starbucks’ American business. On the same-store sales metric, he has not succeeded. Through the first three full quarters of his tenure at Starbucks, same-store sales fell, and began lapping declines from the prior year, as well.
But given the scope of the brand’s problems at the time he took the helm and the scale of its system, it would be unfair to characterize his tenure as a failure. Starbucks’ traffic declines and sales drops have slowed, with comps down 1% in fiscal Q2 and 2% in fiscal Q3 2025.
Some of the changes Niccol has spearheaded — increased marketing budgets for instance — are likely short-term traffic drivers. But others, like the removal of a major portion of menu items and a transition away from rewards discounting, are short-term traffic killers meant to strengthen the brand’s coffee-forward identity and premium brand positioning in the long run.
There is some evidence to suggest those moves, in aggregate, are working.
“We saw the percentage of company-operated coffeehouses with positive full-day transaction comps and positive morning transactions improve for the third straight quarter,” Niccol said on the chain’s most recent earnings call. “Non-rewards customers delivered transaction growth year-over-year for the first time since the post-pandemic recovery.”
https://www.restaurantdive.com/news/starbucks-ceo-brian-niccol-by-the-numbers-anniversary/759515/