What the new Starbucks CEO could mean for the coffee giant's digital future
GeekWire
GeekWire
4.4 • 116 Ratings
🗓️ 13 August 2024
⏱️ 20 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
The naming of Chipotle CEO Brian Niccol as the new Starbucks CEO on Tuesday gives the Seattle-based coffee giant a new leader from the restaurant and fast casual industry with experience leading a digital transformation. We discuss what that could mean on this special mid-week episode of the GeekWire Podcast.
Related Coverage: Starbucks’ new CEO brings extensive digital experience from prior role leading Chipotle
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Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | It's funny because I was going to mention this as an example of the power of the Starbucks brand. |
| 0:04.7 | You drink water. Yeah, Starbucks has good water. Maybe this is their new pack to rebounding. |
| 0:10.0 | It tastes fresh and clean. I don't know what it is. Maybe it's the container or just some placebo effect, but you know they've talked about energy drinks and new food, but maybe it's water. Water. |
| 0:27.0 | Welcome to GeekWire. |
| 0:28.0 | I'm GeekWire co-founder Todd Bishop. |
| 0:30.0 | And I'm GeekWire editor Taylor Sober. All right, we are back with another special midweek episode, another CEO transition. |
| 0:38.0 | This time it's Starbucks. |
| 0:40.0 | The company today announced that Brian Nickel, the CEO of Chipotle, will be its new CEO |
| 0:48.0 | succeeding Lakshman Nara Simhan. It was a very short tenure. He started officially in March of 2023, so a little bit more than a year in the role of CEO. And Taylor, I've always considered Starbucks to be another Seattle tech giant in many ways. |
| 1:05.3 | Its digital strategy, its mobile order and payments are at the heart of the company in many ways, |
| 1:12.1 | and really at the heart of this announcement today of the new |
| 1:15.7 | CEO. You cover this company, I've covered this company quite a bit. Were you |
| 1:20.2 | surprised first off to hear that Starbucks had made this transition? |
| 1:24.0 | Definitely the name surprised me. |
| 1:25.8 | We knew that Starbucks sales or something, a lot of activists investor activity, Howard Schultz |
| 1:32.0 | clearly by way of his LinkedIn posts was not happy, but I think seeing |
| 1:38.1 | the Chipotle CEO's name as the new Starbucks CEO was definitely a surprise. |
| 1:43.6 | Wall Street seemed to love this decision. |
| 1:45.9 | Starbucks stock, which has been hurting over the past several months, |
| 1:49.5 | was up more than 20%, and Chipotle's stock was down more than 9%. So clearly Brian Nickel is a respected CEO, he's been in fast food, he knows the game. can he fix Starbucks? That's the question that remains. |
| 2:05.4 | And we're going to dive into that a little bit on this episode, but I want to set the stage. |
| 2:09.1 | First, I saw Laxman speak, the outgoing CEO now, at a Seattle Metropolitan Chamber of Commerce event |
... |
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