The CEO of the Starbucks coffee chain, Michael Conway, surprised many by quitting his job just six months in.
Conway took on the job in April, 2024, moving up from his prior role as a group president of international development, and from his role as president of Starbucks’ Canadian division. Conway says he will stay on with the company until the end of November to help ease his replacement in the role.
This will cap 11 years of service to Starbucks for Conway.
Starbucks did not announce a new CEO, likely because the company has not had time to do a search. In the meantime, Sara Trilling, the North American president for the company, will oversee U.S. retail operations. She has been with the coffee chain for 22 years, and her past portfolio includes managing 3,500 locations.
Some media reports say Starbucks wants to become more efficient when making business decisions, so it has decided to winnow its top leadership slots.
The company is facing a number of problems, including, believe it or not, increasingly complex drink orders from customers, rising food costs that to be passed along to consumers, and uneven foot traffic in some of its stores. All of these are having a depressing effect on Starbucks’ profits. Former Chipotle CEO Brian Niccol will be in charge of making changes to store operations to improve the “customer experience.”
It looks like he is going to have to deal with staff troubles, too. Some stores have what appear to be lazy staff who do not show up for their shifts on time. In some cases, they don’t even open the store according to its posted hours. A media outlet recently visited a Starbucks in New York City that claimed to open at 5 a.m., but was still closed more than an hour later. Apparently only two of the normal six staff showed up for work.
Niccol is trying to get on top of these problems by starting a conversation with employees. He sent a recent all-hands letter saying that the company’s main problem is that it seems to have “drifted from our core.” He said he wants to make improvements for both staff and customers.
