How one of the world’s biggest brands is fixing what’s broken—and how you can apply the same moves in your plant or shop. A refreshingly practical playbook for resetting your business, regaining control, and winning back the trust of customers and employees alike. No fluff, no theory—just clear direction that manufacturing leaders can actually use.
When Brian Niccol took the CEO seat at Starbucks, he didn’t make bold new promises or chase the latest tech trend. He got back to the basics—and that’s where the magic started. Manufacturing businesses dealing with chaos, complexity, or slow erosion in performance can do the same. There’s a real opportunity to rebuild your business, not by reinventing it, but by refocusing on what always worked best.
It all started with Brian Niccol’s “Back to Starbucks” plan based on his open letter dated September 10, 2024.
Letter starts:
Message from Brian: Back to Starbucks
An open letter for all partners, customers and stakeholders
As I step into my first week as ceo, I do so not only as a leader, but as a long-time customer. Over the past few weeks, I’ve spent time in our stores, speaking with partners and customers, and talking with teams across operations, store design, marketing and product development.
In each conversation, two truths emerged: First, Starbucks is a beloved brand with wonderful people. We are woven into the fabric of people’s lives and the communities we serve. Second, there’s a shared sense that we have drifted from our core. We have an opportunity to make the store experience better for our partners and, in turn, for our customers.
Starbucks was founded on a love for high quality coffee — handcrafted by our outstanding green apron partners and enjoyed with intention. Coffee is our heart. We own and operate Hacienda Alsacia, our coffee farm on the slopes of Costa Rica’s Volcano Poás, which serves as the heart of our research and innovation efforts. From our network of Farmer Support Centers, Starbucks agronomists share research, education and best practices with local farmers. We invest in the finest quality beans. Our skilled team of roasters carefully prepare these beans in five Starbucks roasting facilities across the U.S., in Amsterdam to serve EMEA markets, in Kunshan for China, and in Karnataka, India, for that growing market. We also operate Starbucks Reserve Roasteries in Milan, Shanghai, Tokyo, New York City, Chicago and Seattle, where we roast small batch Reserve coffees. We design the best equipment for our stores and invest in training for our baristas to ensure every cup reflects our commitment to excellence. Each cup is more than a drink; it’s a handcrafted moment, made with care.
Our stores have always been more than a place to get a drink. They’ve been a gathering space, a community center where conversations are sparked, friendships form, and everyone is greeted by a welcoming barista. A visit to Starbucks is about connection and joy, and of course great coffee.
Many of our customers still experience this magic every day, but in some places — especially in the U.S. — we aren’t always delivering. It can feel transactional, menus can feel overwhelming, product is inconsistent, the wait too long or the handoff too hectic. These moments are opportunities for us to do better.
Today, I’m making a commitment: We’re getting back to Starbucks. We’re refocusing on what has always set Starbucks apart — a welcoming coffeehouse where people gather, and where we serve the finest coffee, handcrafted by our skilled baristas. This is our enduring identity. We will innovate from here.
We’ll focus initially on four key areas that we know will have the biggest impact:
- Empowering our baristas to take care of our customers: We’ll make sure our baristas have the tools and time to craft great drinks every time, delivered personally to each customer. For our partners, we’ll build on our tradition of leadership in retail by making Starbucks the best place to work, with career opportunities and a clear path to growth.
- Get the morning right, every morning: People start their day with us, and we need to meet their expectations. This means delivering outstanding drinks and food, on time, every time.
- Reestablishing Starbucks as the community coffeehouse: We’re committed to elevating the in-store experience — ensuring our spaces reflect the sights, smells and sounds that define Starbucks. Our stores will be inviting places to linger, with comfortable seating, thoughtful design and a clear distinction between “to-go” and “for-here” service.
- Telling our story: It’s time for us to tell our story again — reminding people of our unmatched coffee expertise, our role in communities and the special experience that only Starbucks can provide. We won’t let others define who we are.
To support this vision for our U.S. business, we’re making investments in technology that enhance the partner and customer experience, improve our supply chain and evolve our app and mobile ordering platform.
This is our plan for the U.S., and where I need to focus my time initially. But Starbucks is a global company. We operate in 87 markets around the world, where thousands of talented green apron partners share their love of coffee with customers every day. I know I have much to learn from these outstanding teams and I look forward to getting on the road and spending time with them. In China, we need to understand the potential path to capture growth and capitalize on our strengths in this dynamic market. Internationally, we see enormous potential for growth, especially in regions like the Middle East, where we’ll work to dispel misconceptions about our brand, and in Asia Pacific, Europe and Latin America, where the love for Starbucks is strong.
My focus for the first 100 days is clear. I’ll spend time in our stores and at our Support Centers, meeting with key partners and suppliers, and working with our team to drive these critical first steps. Together, we will get back to what makes Starbucks, Starbucks.
On we go,
Brian Niccol
chairman & ceo
Letter ends.
The Backstory
Brian Niccol, best known for transforming Taco Bell and then leading a major turnaround at Chipotle, became CEO of Starbucks in September 2024. His appointment came at a time when Starbucks was facing criticism for a drift away from its original identity: an elevated, welcoming coffeehouse experience grounded in quality coffee and personal connection.
Before Niccol’s arrival, customer feedback had become increasingly critical — particularly in the U.S. — pointing to Starbucks feeling more like a generic fast-food chain than a premium, personalized coffeehouse. Inconsistent product quality, slow handoffs, crowded mobile order stations, and a chaotic in-store atmosphere were among the most common complaints. Internally, baristas felt overburdened and under-resourced. The brand needed a cultural and operational reset.
Niccol’s “Back to Starbucks” Plan: Core Focus Areas
Niccol’s plan is framed around getting back to what originally made Starbucks beloved. He outlines four major pillars:
- Empowering Baristas
- Starbucks will reinvest in its people by giving baristas the tools, time, and support to deliver a personal, handcrafted customer experience.
- Career development and internal growth paths will be prioritized to restore Starbucks as an employer of choice in retail.
- Getting Mornings Right
- Mornings are peak business — and often the most broken.
- The focus will be on making drinks and food faster, fresher, and more reliable.
- The aim is to reduce friction, increase consistency, and win back daily ritual customers who might be drifting to competitors like Dunkin’ or McDonald’s.
- Reestablishing the Coffeehouse Identity
- Niccol is pushing to redesign stores as destinations, not just pickup counters.
- Expect clearer zoning between mobile order pickups and in-store seating, more inviting layouts, and a revival of Starbucks as a third place — a gathering spot between home and work.
- This is a clear contrast to recent years where the brand leaned into “convenience at all costs.”
- Telling the Starbucks Story Again
- Niccol wants to reclaim the brand narrative, emphasizing Starbucks’ deep coffee expertise, its global footprint, and its connection to local communities.
- The goal is to counteract commoditization — reminding customers that Starbucks is not just another coffee chain.
Supporting Moves
- Tech investments are planned to support store operations, streamline mobile orders, enhance the app, and modernize the supply chain — all in service of the partner and customer experience.
- Niccol is also taking a 100-day listening tour, visiting stores, support centers, and international markets to understand challenges firsthand and set a grounded execution plan.
- He specifically calls out China, the Middle East, and Asia Pacific as growth markets with unique strategic needs.
Strategic Themes and Insights
- This isn’t a reinvention — it’s a return to core. Niccol knows Starbucks doesn’t need to become something new. It needs to rediscover and operationalize its identity — quality, connection, consistency.
- His turnaround playbook is familiar: Niccol successfully used similar principles at Chipotle — streamlining operations, simplifying the menu, reinvesting in staff, and restoring brand cachet through storytelling and culture.
- By starting with the U.S. market, Niccol is targeting the brand’s most mature and troubled geography, where operational complexity and brand dilution are most apparent.
So, how can manufacturers apply Niccol’s “Back to Starbucks” Plan and its lessons to grow and turbocharge their business?
1. Start with What Made You Great
Niccol’s first message was clear: Starbucks had drifted. The brand got too complicated, too transactional, and it forgot what it originally did best—serve great coffee in welcoming spaces. Sound familiar? Many manufacturing businesses lose their way the same way. You grow, take on more types of work, respond to too many one-off customer requests, and suddenly your operation is doing too many things—not all of them well.
If you built your reputation on quick-turn parts for local machine builders, and now you’re quoting low-margin overseas jobs just to stay busy, it’s time to stop. The path forward isn’t about doing more. It’s about getting back to better. Go talk to the customers who’ve been with you five or ten years. What did they originally come to you for? Speed? Quality? Personal service? Build around that. If it was your fast problem-solving or ability to jump into emergencies, double down on it. Reshape your offer, your messaging, and your schedule around that core. Growth doesn’t come from chasing—it comes from clarity.
2. Fix What’s Broken in the Morning
One of Niccol’s top priorities? Mornings. Starbucks’ busiest hours weren’t going smoothly—long waits, missed drinks, and a stressful environment. He called it out and focused on making mornings flawless again. In manufacturing, you’ve got an equivalent. Maybe it’s the first shift startup. Maybe it’s the moment a new job hits the floor. Or maybe it’s the quoting and handoff process when a customer says “yes” and expects you to take it from there. Whatever that core moment is, fix it.
Let’s say you’ve got a fab shop where the first few hours of every day are chaotic—missing materials, unclear job tickets, machine operators waiting for instructions. That’s costing you real money. Every minute spent untangling confusion is a minute not spent cutting, bending, or welding. What if your morning setup was tighter than any other part of the day? What if you staged materials in advance, had pre-shift job reviews, and started production at full speed at 7:00 AM instead of 8:15? You’d be surprised how quickly daily performance improves when the first few hours run clean.
3. Simplify How Customers Work with You
Niccol noticed Starbucks had become too complicated. Menus felt overwhelming. Pickup counters were chaotic. It felt like a transaction, not a moment. For manufacturing businesses, it’s easy to fall into this trap too. You overcomplicate quoting. You bury customers in back-and-forth questions. You send cryptic invoices or leave delivery timelines vague. That stuff adds friction—and friction kills deals.
Take a business that makes custom metal enclosures. If the quoting process takes six emails and two phone calls just to figure out what the customer actually needs, they’ll walk. Now imagine you have a simple intake sheet that asks five key questions—dimensions, material, finish, quantity, delivery target. You return a rough estimate in 24 hours and include a one-pager explaining how your process works, what the next steps are, and how to avoid delays. That customer just had the easiest quoting experience they’ve had all year—and they haven’t even seen the part yet. That’s how trust gets built.
4. Invest in the People Closest to the Work
Niccol isn’t just talking about better drinks—he’s investing in better baristas. That means better tools, better training, and more clarity in how the job should be done. The lesson here is simple: empower the people doing the work, not just the people running the numbers. In manufacturing, your operators, welders, machinists, and assemblers are the product. Their performance is your quality.
If you’ve got good people stuck using worn-out jigs, outdated work instructions, or broken equipment, you’re wasting talent. A shop I know had a bottleneck at a CNC mill that always seemed behind. Everyone assumed it was due to demand. Turns out the operator was doing double duty—changing tooling and pulling his own material. Once they brought in a material handler and standardized the tooling process, throughput doubled with zero overtime. That’s what happens when you listen to the floor and give people what they need to do their best work.
5. Reconnect with Your Brand—and Tell the Story Again
Starbucks isn’t just fixing its operations—it’s reminding customers what it stands for. That includes great coffee, community, and human connection. Manufacturing businesses can do the same, even if it feels less emotional. Brand isn’t just logos and slogans—it’s your reputation, your consistency, your promise to the customer. Reclaiming that isn’t about marketing—it’s about clarity.
If you’ve been around for 25 years and your best customers come to you for reliability and no-surprises service, say that. Say it clearly on your website, on your quotes, and in your shop. Train your team to live that story. You’re not “just” a job shop—you’re the vendor that never lets your customers down. That’s a real brand. When the customer believes it and your team repeats it, you’ve got momentum again.
6. Don’t Add Until You’ve Fixed the Core
Niccol made it clear: Starbucks will innovate, but only after it stabilizes. That’s smart. Too many business owners think the solution is a new ERP, a new machine, or a flashy dashboard. But if your base processes are broken, new tech just makes the mess more efficient. Get the core right first. Simplify the workflow. Fix the communication gaps. Make the handoffs smoother. Then—and only then—look at adding something new.
I’ve seen companies spend six figures on scheduling software when the real problem was three supervisors using different job priority lists. No app can fix that. But a ten-minute huddle every morning and a single dry-erase board can. Start with clarity, not complexity.
7. Be Present Where the Work Happens
Brian Niccol is spending his first 100 days in stores, talking to employees, watching how drinks are made and handed off. That’s how you learn where the gaps really are. For a manufacturing owner, that means spending time on the shop floor, watching jobs run, listening to complaints, and asking questions with no agenda. That’s how you’ll spot the tiny fixes that unlock big gains.
One business owner started showing up to morning setups twice a week—not to bark orders, just to observe and chat. Within a month, morale improved. People asked smarter questions. And he discovered that one of the team leads had built a shadow scheduling system in Excel that was way better than the official one. That’s the kind of gold you miss when you’re always in the office or buried in email.
3 Takeaways You Can Start Acting On Today
1. Clarify and simplify what you do best—then build everything around that.
Stop spreading your business too thin. Focus on your strengths and let your process, people, and messaging reflect it.
2. Fix the friction in how you start jobs and serve customers.
Your mornings and your quoting processes are two of the biggest leverage points you have. Clean them up, and the ripple effect will be huge.
3. Get closer to the work—and listen before you invest.
Most of what’s slowing you down isn’t a lack of tools—it’s a lack of visibility. Spend time in the work and you’ll know what needs fixing next.
The Real Work of a Turnaround Happens in the Details
There’s a difference between saying “we need to improve” and actually digging into what that means. Starbucks didn’t start with lofty ideas—they started with coffee, customer experience, and their stores. If your manufacturing business is serious about turning things around, you need that same attention to the unsexy but important details. One manufacturing company had great equipment but poor internal communication. Jobs changed mid-run and no one knew until it was too late. The solution wasn’t a new system—it was a whiteboard near the machines with daily updates. Productivity jumped just from making the work visible.
Another company with long lead times was struggling to keep up with orders. It wasn’t demand—it was how work-in-progress materials were scattered in four different staging areas. They spent two weeks reorganizing their floor layout, added labels and visual markers, and shaved off nearly 18% of their average delivery time. Customers noticed. Reorders increased.
These stories aren’t about genius. They’re about observation, responsiveness, and follow-through. If your business is stuck, you likely don’t need to overhaul everything. You just need to refocus on what customers and employees are actually experiencing day to day—and commit to improving that experience a little more every week.
What You Fix First Sets the Tone for Everything Else
Leaders set the pace. Niccol didn’t delegate the hard stuff—he made the core problems his personal focus. If you’re leading a manufacturing business, the first thing you fix tells your team what matters. If you invest in a shiny sales campaign while your equipment backlog is a mess, they’ll know your priorities are off. But if you take time to fix a toolroom bottleneck, improve job traveler clarity, or repair a noisy HVAC unit that’s been bugging your welders, you send a powerful message: we care about getting the work right.
And when employees see leadership showing up in the real places, not just in meetings, something shifts. They start speaking up. They get more engaged. They take more ownership. That’s what changes cultures—and that’s what drives real turnaround.
Ask Better Questions and Listen More Than You Talk
The best part of Niccol’s message wasn’t the plan—it was the listening that came before it. Too often, owners jump into “fix-it” mode without actually understanding what’s going wrong. The better move is to ask the right people: your shop leads, your operators, your shipping crew, even your maintenance techs. They already know where the biggest inefficiencies are. You just need to ask and actually listen.
Questions like:
– “What slows you down the most during the day?”
– “If you had $5,000 to improve your work area, how would you use it?”
– “What’s one thing customers complain about most?”
– “What’s one thing we used to do well, but don’t anymore?”
Answers to questions like these are pure gold—because they reveal what you can’t see from the office.
Top 5 FAQs from Manufacturing Business Leaders
1. What if I don’t have time to be on the floor every day?
You don’t need to live on the floor—but two or three regular, short visits a week will dramatically improve your visibility. Even 20 focused minutes can help you spot what reports never show.
2. Should I pause growth efforts while doing a turnaround?
Yes—if growth is pulling you away from fixing core issues. You can’t build on an unstable foundation. Stabilize first. Then grow intentionally.
3. How do I know which part of the business to fix first?
Start where the pain is greatest for customers or employees. That could be morning setups, quoting, tooling delays, or unclear communication. Fix what’s hurting daily execution.
4. What’s a fast way to improve employee morale during a turnaround?
Show up, listen, and implement at least one of their suggestions quickly. It’s not about perks—it’s about being heard and seeing results from what they say.
5. How do I rebuild trust with long-time customers after slipping?
Reach out personally. Acknowledge where things slipped. Share what you’re doing to improve. Then follow through with a much better next job. Reliability speaks louder than marketing.
Ready to Lead a Real Turnaround?
If your manufacturing business has drifted, the solution isn’t a silver bullet—it’s a return to clarity, consistency, and the customer. Just like Starbucks, your best path forward is already inside your business. Focus on what made you great, show up where the work happens, and commit to improving the real experience your people and your customers have every day. The rest will follow.
Start with one thing tomorrow morning—and let the results build from there.