Brian Niccol’s accession to Starbucks’ throne on Sept. 9, 2024, appeared to be a watershed moment for the coffee brand. After years of same-store sales stagnation, ineffective menu innovation, labor strife, boycotts and consumer price sensitivity, the chain seemed in need of a thorough renovation of its brand image and operations.
Since last fall, headlines proliferated about Niccol’s changes at Starbucks — including the chain’s coffeehouse pivot, mobile sequencing algorithm and menu innovations like protein-rich Cold Foam.
But by comparing key metrics from Starbucks’ most recent 10-Q and other publicly available information, it’s possible to piece together a more comprehensive snapshot.
Take a look at our breakdown of a year of highs and lows — and persistent same-store sales struggles — at the world’s largest coffee chain.
The chain hit 41,097 total stores at the end of its fiscal Q3, per its most recent 10-Q. By contrast, the chain counted 39,477 stores in Q3 2024, which was the last full quarter before Laxman Narasimhan was replaced with Niccol as CEO.
In North America, its core market, Starbucks saw its company-operated store total increase by more than 500, hitting 11,453 in Q3 2025. That growth came despite the chain’s decision to pull back on new openings in order to help refinance the overhaul of its cafe base.
Store growth helped the brand offset same-store sales declines. Total net revenues hit $27.6 billion in the first three quarters of fiscal 2025, up from $27.1 billion in the year-ago period.
However, the brand is lagging behind the ambitious 45,000-store goal it set in 2022, which would have required opening more than 10,000 stores. That promise, however, came about half a year before the chain started seeing a slowdown in daily transactions, which eventually contributed to the current crisis at the brand.
Niccol was brought on with just three weeks left in Starbucks’ fiscal year, which ended on Sept. 29, 2024. That quarter, the chain posted a 6% decline in comparable sales in North America, the third-consecutive quarter of comp sales dips.
Niccol’s initial task as CEO was to turn around Starbucks’ American business. On the same-store sales metric, he has not succeeded. Through the first three full quarters of his tenure at Starbucks, same-store sales fell, and began lapping declines from the prior year, as well.
But given the scope of the brand’s problems at the time he took the helm and the scale of its system, it would be unfair to characterize his tenure as a failure. Starbucks’ traffic declines and sales drops have slowed, with comps down 1% in fiscal Q2 and 2% in fiscal Q3 2025.
Some of the changes Niccol has spearheaded — increased marketing budgets for instance — are likely short-term traffic drivers. But others, like the removal of a major portion of menu items and a transition away from rewards discounting, are short-term traffic killers meant to strengthen the brand’s coffee-forward identity and premium brand positioning in the long run.
There is some evidence to suggest those moves, in aggregate, are working.
“We saw the percentage of company-operated coffeehouses with positive full-day transaction comps and positive morning transactions improve for the third straight quarter,” Niccol said on the chain’s most recent earnings call. “Non-rewards customers delivered transaction growth year-over-year for the first time since the post-pandemic recovery.”
Another metric reflecting the ambiguous success of Niccol’s first year is the brand’s stock price, which closed at $92.21 on his first full day as CEO, according to Nasdaq data. Niccol’s name alone was enough, at the start, to trigger major swings in stock price: Starbucks went for $77.03 on Aug. 12, 2024. Niccol’s accession, announced the next day, kicked its price up to $95.90.
Since then, the stock price is down modestly, closing at $84.17 on September 8, a decrease of about 8.7% year-over-year.
Niccol’s eyewatering year-one compensation package — worth around 6,666 times the annual pay of the chain’s median worker — is the clearest measure of the board’s confidence in his abilities to renew the brand’s fortunes. But the lion’s share of that compensation, some $90 million, came in the form of stock grants, which means Niccol’s ultimate payout is only as big as the brand’s performance. He also received a $5 million sign-on bonus.
While Starbucks has awarded nearly $100 million in CEO compensation this year, the brand’s total spending on wages and salaries has increased as well — despite significant layoffs of its corporate support staff. In Q3 fiscal 2025, Starbucks spent $2.48 billion on wages and benefits, according to the store-level expenses section of its 10-Q. This marks an increase of about $262 million over Q3 2024, in keeping with its labor investment efforts. And the chain has pledged an additional $500 million in store-level labor outlays.
One of the first major changes Niccol announced was the end of surcharges on plant-based-milk. The brand said the surcharges typically ranged between 70 and 80 cents. On Starbucks’ October 2024 earnings call, Niccol said the change would result in a roughly 10% discount for consumers who ordered non-dairy milk.
This change supported several pressing strategic priorities. On the one hand, it provided an effective discount to many price-sensitive consumers, but it did so without weakening the premium market positioning of core menu items. It also aligned Starbucks with broader trends away from dairy in the coffee sector, potentially amplifying some of the brand’s emphasis on healthier-seeming options, like protein Cold Foam.
Starbucks also began moving away from discounting through its loyalty program last fall — the removal of the non-dairy upcharge may have helped the brand offset some of the traffic loss from that loyalty shift. Earlier this year, the brand standardized its pricing for other drink customizations.
Niccol joined the chain a little more than six months after it announced a framework agreement for bargaining with Starbucks Workers United. That agreement brought the chain to the bargaining table with the union in the spring of 2024, seemingly in keeping with its professed desire to settle the fight with the union by the end of that year.
A year on from Niccol’s accession, there is still no contract. Starbucks Workers United resumed its limited-duration strikes, and in May dozens of stores saw walkouts by baristas who were protesting the chain’s dress code changes.
Through it all, the union has continued to organize new stores: SBWU has won elections at 155 cafes since Niccol’s election, bringing its total electoral victories to 646. The union said in an email that it now represents over 12,000 workers.
Starbucks said there are about 600 active union stores, when accounting for changes like closures, and emphasized that this is a relatively small portion of its 11,453 company-operated North American storebase. But four years ago, SBWU didn’t represent a single store.
