Starbucks Tried Automation. Now It’s Winning by Slowing Down

Starbucks’ new CEO is taking the chain back to basics.

Getty Images / Credit: Eko Prasetyo

When Brian Niccol took the helm as Starbucks CEO in 2024, he promised that the floundering company would be going “back to Starbucks.” In a world defined by automation, he wanted to return the coffee giant to its café-culture roots. But he urged patience. And then, for five straight quarters, Starbucks stagnated.

Until suddenly, it didn’t. Last quarter, Starbucks’s same-store sales were up 4% in North America, with overall transactions growing 3%. The company reported that members of its vaunted loyalty program were buying more, and casual customers were also returning.

This nascent success is the result of one of the most aggressive retail redesigns in business history. Under Niccol, Starbucks is refreshing more than a thousand stores, replacing cold, easy-to-clean surfaces with wood finishes, plants, and plenty of color. Niccol has also pledged to add more than 100,000 seats back to cafés by the end of 2026, and is encouraging customers to linger with free refills.

Starbucks is improving customer service by rebuilding the logic behind its digital app, training baristas to bring the human touch back to their work, and introducing a modernized menu, with fresh-baked croissants and protein-laden cold foams. (Niccol also eliminated distractions by selling off 60% of Starbucks’s China business.)

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Starbucks isn’t out of the woods: Its spending on labor and retail upgrades, plus tariffs on coffee, has cut into operating margins, a situation that Niccol says won’t improve until fiscal 2028. But “this is just a waypoint in our turnaround,” Niccol said at the company’s investor day in January. “Our ambitions extend well beyond this timeline.”

This article originally appeared in Inc.’s sister publication, Fast Company.

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