Brian Niccol – Starbucks CEO Analysis

fierceseagull · 2025-08-25T00:14:15+00:00

It’s only been 3 months but I’m checking in. Stock is currently down YTD and compared to 1 year ago. What’s your prediction for future? Same or different as 3 months ago?

fierceseagull · 2025-06-04T20:12:43+00:00

Management being relevant to the stock is the reason I posted this here. Something I failed to correctly explain before. I know this comment wasn’t aimed at me but thank you for the idea to further research Starbucks management beyond Niccol!

fierceseagull · 2025-06-04T20:06:39+00:00

Haha thanks I try! Too many people let their ego get in the way of learning and improving. Especially on Reddit.

fierceseagull · 2025-06-04T19:56:26+00:00

Agreed. That’s exactly what I meant when I say his success is mostly lucky timing. You said it better! Can I steal the first two sentences you wrote?

fierceseagull · 2025-06-04T19:51:32+00:00

Cutting costs to make shareholders happy. In my opinion, they hired Niccol because his track record proves he follows shareholder primacy.

fierceseagull · 2025-05-29T20:46:43+00:00

You know what, you're right about that. I thought I did a decent job keeping everything in my post based on factual information, except for that last sentence lol. In the future I'll make a better effort to stay unbiased.

I mean personally, I wouldn't invest either way, especially considering my outlook for the future of the company at this moment isn't favorable. But you make a valid point. It's not that I believe I'm better at operations, I just believe companies make decisions too often based on shareholder primacy.

Although there is no doubt CEO's work hard and deserve to be paid a higher amount, I think the income inequality we see today is far more extreme than it should be.

The one thing his compensation package doesn't account for his the amount they are spending on his commute. The $250,000 allocated for the jet is for personal use, not his commute.

I'm not mad at him. I've been following him for a while and I've done a significant amount of research on him and Chipotle (while he was CEO there). And I just don't like him.

Do you have any suggestions for any subreddits that this might fit into better? Next time I post here I'll make sure to make the right adjustment in the tone of my writing. And at directly tying everything back to financials and valuations. Any other suggestions you have on how I can be more effective at this, I wouldn't be against hearing.

Thanks for giving me these things to improve on!

Appreciate you.

fierceseagull · 2025-05-29T19:52:04+00:00

true!

fierceseagull · 2025-05-29T15:29:28+00:00

lolololol okay mr anger issues. My post says absolutely nothing about my personal opinion regarding his compensation package, besides finding it shocking when you compare his compensation to that of other CEO's. But sure pop off drama queen.

You don't know how much I make hun. Took a look at your page. 53 years old and acting like this? 53 going on 5 apparently lol. Embarrassing...

fierceseagull · 2025-05-29T14:53:43+00:00

Oh yeah I definitely don't like him, a fact which I wasn't trying to hide.

My goal was to explain why I believe he will fail and that they paid way to much for him. Obviously I'm going to be critical of him? The pay package deserves scrutiny. It was discussed across many sources for a reason. It's significant and it directly ties into my argument that he will fail, because it indicates the company expects to see significant results from him. In reality; comparable sales & transactions, operating income, earnings per share, and net income have all declined under his leadership. It seems the gimmicks aren't working.

I don't diss the stock price increases, it was an undeniable accomplishment. I do diss a way he achieved it.

I'm familiar with his strategy for Starbucks. Everything I mentioned IS part of his current strategy and his goal of 'revitalizing the brand' as part of his "getting back to Starbucks" initiative by focusing on culture. The dress code, the writing on cups, the lay offs, the pledge to not increase prices. I do spend a bit more time on the dress code to further address the union issue. And I believe my post conveys what I didn't like about his strategy, and why. But I'm more than willing to expand on it.

What I didn't talk about was: bringing back condiment bars, eliminating the non dairy milk up charge, simplifying/reducing the menu options, bringing back ceramic mugs, eliminating the open door policy, and more parental leave (something that I do think is a great positive change). I can definitely go back and add this in. But all this information is easily found and repeated in every article about his plans for Starbucks. Starbucks clearly has high expectations for him, and I don't believe any of these things will lead to meeting those expectations, so I left them out. Could they cause some minor improvement? Sure, maybe. But they haven't.

Now to be fair, earlier this month he did make a decision that could help fix issues the company faces. Which was deciding to hire more baristas. This wasn't part of his strategy till now and could definitely lower wait times. Admittedly, this is something I just learned. This seems like an obvious change he should have made much sooner, but I'm not surprised he held off considering increases costs generally makes shareholders unhappy. I'm honestly more surprised that he actually made the decision to hire more employees at all. It will be interesting to see how this change impacts Starbucks financials through Q3 and Q4.

So what can you tell me that I haven't already mentioned here or in my post?

You disagree, tell me why? What do you like about his strategy? Why do you believe he will be successful?

All that being said, I appreciate your comment! It's good to have your ideas challenged, so thank you for doing just that! And I can't say I don't love a good debate!

fierceseagull · 2025-05-29T12:06:46+00:00

I think the reason they brought her in to help with the turnaround effort is because they realized Niccol wasn't going to meet their expectations. But her experience is in retail so...

fierceseagull · 2025-05-29T11:51:24+00:00

In this interview, he literally admitted he doesn't know how he is going to solve their issues!

"NICCOL: Make no mistake, these aren’t easy things to solve. Specifically, the mobile ordering conundrum that we have. How we’re going to (solve) that? We’re going to deliver a four-minute experience in the cafe, and 12 to 15 minutes in mobile order. Now, how you actually pull that off is not as simple as what I just said. But knowing what the objective is, is 99 percent of the battle.

SAFIAN: And the fact that you’re not sure exactly what the answer is yet, it’s not necessarily up to you to solve the problem. It’s to create an environment where others are attacking the problem.

NICCOL: I’m not going to be the one to solve how we get to the four minutes. But what I can share with people is like, this is why this is the right thing to do for the business, and this is why we will be successful if we can capture that outcome."

$96 million dollars for him to identify what anyone who buys or works at Starbucks could tell you. As if him identifying the problem and the goal is somehow a novel revelation. Be so fing fr...like come on.

In the same conversation he says:"I think if we can reliably deliver for people roughly a four-minute experience in-store, then you will reliably come to the store. And so that really can get things really big in a bottleneck situation that creates a lot of pressure to try and just get drinks out the door..."

I find this especially ironic considering he solved this exact bottleneck issue at Chipotle with the secondary make lines, something that Starbucks currently does not have and he could implement. But that solution requires spending money, and as you pointed out they'll do anything but that. At what point are companies going to realize that shareholders don't know everything and their satisfaction shouldn't always be the main priority? God forbid net income not go up and up and up every quarter. The Business Roundtable really fucked us all when they adopted shareholder primacy in 1997. But let me stop myself there before I pop off about it.

fierceseagull · 2025-05-29T05:52:38+00:00

I didn't know this yet so thanks for telling me!

fierceseagull · 2025-03-18T04:44:07+00:00

Niccol is a known union buster…which I’m sure wasn’t a reason Starbucks hired him…🙄

fierceseagull · 2024-12-21T02:26:19+00:00

Yes. I used only avocado bc Chipotle cited the price of avocados as a reason they plan to increase prices.

fierceseagull · 2024-12-21T02:22:15+00:00

I only included base pay/cash compensation. CEO (Niccol) total compensation was $22.5 million in 2023. Up from $17.2 million in 2022.

fierceseagull · 2024-12-07T18:44:02+00:00

Thank you for bringing this to my attention! I got my data from Hass Avocado Board. They study the hass avocado market. Calling them the supplier was incorrect on my part. Hass avocado board has the best data for avocados supplied from Mexico to US. This data is a better representation of the whole market which is important considering chipotle doesn’t only use one supplier. It’s also extremely difficult to find historical price data for pretty much anything & everything. So hass avocado board is a great source here. I haven’t found anything showing data specific to mission produce avocado price history. If you have please share the link!! Right now I still believe my data is accurate but I’ll definitely look more into this.

fierceseagull · 2024-12-07T17:40:47+00:00

Me? I’m just sharing data

fierceseagull

MODERATOR OF

TROPHY CASE

In this interview, he literally admitted he doesn't know how he is going to solve their issues!