Brian Niccol is overseeing big changes as chief executive at Starbucks. It's hardly his first time attempting a turnaround at a fast-food chain.
Niccol has over two decades of experience in the restaurant industry, from Pizza Hut to Chipotle. He's honed a specialty in that time as someone who can work magic on a struggling chain to make it successful.
Here's how Niccol became one of the most notable leaders in the restaurant industry, commanding one of the highest compensation packages among his peers at publicly traded companies.
Niccol got his start at Procter & Gamble
After graduating from Miami University in Ohio in 1996, Niccol took a job at consumer products manufacturer Procter & Gamble.
One of his early successes was a marketing campaign for Scope mouthwash that allowed customers to send animated kisses to each other through the email platform Hotmail, Niccol told the Los Angeles Times in 2015.
While mouthwash itself wasn't new or innovative, Niccol said the campaign used a then-new technology to keep the brand relevant. "What I've always seen is the brands that have a youthful mindset, a youthful vigor, they have a great value proposition," he told the Times.
While working at Procter & Gamble, Niccol earned an MBA from the University of Chicago.
Niccol's first restaurant roles were at Yum!
Niccol joined Yum! Brands, the company that owns KFC, Pizza Hut, and Taco Bell, in 2005. His first roles were at Pizza Hut, where he served as VP of Strategy for two years before being promoted to Chief Marketing Officer.
In 2011, he became CMO at Taco Bell.
Under Niccol, Taco Bell worked to bolster its image after sales had stagnated, and the brand countered public perceptions that its food quality was lacking. In 2011, a lawsuit alleged that Taco Bell's beef contained too many fillers — common additives, such as meat trimmings, which are used across the industry to stretch the quantity of ground meat.
The lawsuit was dismissed, but the impact weighed down Taco Bell's results in the quarters afterward, executives said at the time.
Niccol oversaw various changes, from the chain's new "Live Más" slogan to a new breakfast menu. Taco Bell also launched the Doritos Locos Taco, which features a shell coated in the chip's flavored coating, and began serving boozy Baja Blasts and other alcoholic beverages at Taco Bell Cantina locations.
The changes rejuvenated sales. In 2015, Niccol became the brand's chief executive. By the time he moved on to his next job in 2018, one analyst called his tenure as CEO a "brand revitalization" for Taco Bell.
He led a successful turnaround at Chipotle
In late 2017, Niccol learned that Chipotle founder and CEO Steve Ells planned to step down as soon as the Mexican grill chain could find his replacement.
"When I saw the news, I thought, 'That's interesting,'" Niccol told the Harvard Business Review in 2021. In early 2018, he became the new CEO and a director of Chipotle.
At the time, Chipotle was struggling. A few years earlier, the company faced a monthslong E. coli outbreak at its restaurants, which ultimately sickened over 1,000 people. Similar to the lawsuit over Taco Bell's meat, the fallout was hurting the brand's sales for longer than executives had expected.
Chipotle made some big changes once Niccol took the helm.
He moved the company's headquarters from Colorado to his hometown of Orange County, California. Chipotle beefed up food safety procedures and training for employees, steps Niccol touted in early 2020 as COVID-19 spread around the world and customers became more conscious of their health. The chain also closed dozens of restaurants that were identified as low-performers.
And in a few years, Chipotle went from having almost no digital presence to adding dedicated drive-thru lanes, called "Chipotlanes," for picking up online orders at thousands of stores.
The changes worked. Chipotle's stock was trading around $6 a share when Niccol took over as CEO in March 2018. By the time he left in August 2024, bound for Starbucks, shares of Chipotle stood around $56 each. That 833.33% growth well outpaced the S&P 500's 113.8% growth during the same period.
Niccol's work at Chipotle helped solidify his status as an executive who could improve restaurants' financial performance.
"They might've been struggling at the time, but boy, at the core, I just believed there was a reason why they should succeed," Niccol said at the time.
Even Niccol's current biography at Starbucks mentions his turnaround at Chipotle.
"He more than doubled the business by establishing Chipotle as a culinary leader, pioneering digital innovation, introducing exciting new menu offerings, and expanding internationally," the biography reads.
Niccol put his prowess to the test at Starbucks
Niccol joined the coffee chain as CEO in September 2024.
Before he started, industry analysts said that Niccol's accomplishments at Chipotle and Yum! were strong credentials to tackle Starbucks' challenges, which included slumping quarterly sales and operational challenges such as long wait times.
Still, Starbucks is larger and more complex than Chipotle. Chipotle had about 3,700 locations in its mostly US-based store network at the end of 2024. Starbucks, meanwhile, had about 40,000 stores as of September 2024, according to its annual filing. Just over half of those were outside North America.
In his first six months on the job, Niccol has overseen many changes at the coffee giant, dubbed the "Back to Starbucks" campaign.
The coffee chain laid off about 1,100 corporate employees in February 2025, a move that Niccol said would allow Starbucks to "operate more efficiently, increase accountability, reduce complexity and drive better integration."
He also spearheaded the return of self-service bars for milk and sugar, reintroduced the requirement that patrons make a purchase to hang out inside, and announced plans to streamline the menu by cutting more than a third of its offerings.
The goal of the "Back to Starbucks" campaign is to win customers back and restore Starbucks' traditional role as a "third place" to spend time besides work and home, Niccol has said.
"Our stores will be inviting places to linger, with comfortable seating, thoughtful design, and a clear distinction between 'to-go' and 'for-here' service," he wrote in his first public message as CEO in September.
Starbucks' turnaround is taking shape
Just over a year into his tenure at Starbucks, Niccol's turnaround effort is beginning to gain momentum.
Changes have been made to Starbucks' mobile ordering system, a new training standard to improve the customer experience, called the "Green Apron Service" model, has been rolled out, and the chain has launched a slate of new protein-focused drinks that have boosted sales.
Starbucks also announced in September that it would conduct its second round of corporate layoffs, cutting 900 non-retail positions, as well as closing more than 600 stores that had been identified as low performers.
Starbucks has also issued a return-to-office mandate and a new dress code for in-store staff, though both initiatives have received pushback from some employees. As the changes continue to roll out, unionized baristas have organized their fourth strike in two years — and the third since Niccol became CEO, ahead of the holiday season, in hopes of finalizing their first collective bargaining agreement.
Leadership experts who spoke to Business Insider in September said that Niccol has largely employed the same playbook he used at Chipotle in his turnaround effort at Starbucks.
Though the company's stock is still down more than 6% since Niccol became CEO, Starbucks said in its October earnings report that its fourth-quarter comparable sales rose 1% globally, the first time in seven quarters that the coffee chain has reported an increase.
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