Smaller menus, better vibes: How Starbucks’s CEO is shaking up the brand

Roughly five months into his tenure running the world’s largest coffee chain, Niccol is spearheading changes to overhaul the business and improve the brand’s perception with consumers. Niccol recently told The Wall Street Journal during an interview that fixing ineffective mobile ordering systems is his biggest challenge in turning around Starbucks in the U.S., and one of the greatest opportunities for improvement.

Striking unpopular menu items and addressing customer wait times are also among the top things he is tackling inside U.S. cafes. He said restoring basic offerings like condiment bars is also critical.

Niccol, 51 years old, enjoys Starbucks’s Americano coffee drinks and loves the personal notes and drawings that baristas now scrawl on customers’ cups.

Here are some takeaways from the interview:

He wants a better mobile ordering system in a year.

Starbucks customers want to schedule their online drink orders for pickup at certain times, Niccol said, much like diners can for burrito bowls at Chipotle Mexican Grill.

The company is testing an algorithm to better sequence orders coming into a cafe based on when they should be made. Niccol also hopes to crack the code on scheduled pickup times for mobile orders.

Asked if he will fix mobile ordering in a year, Niccol said he sure hoped so.

“At a minimum, we will be a lot better than where we are today," Niccol said.

He is a big believer in baristas writing on cups.

Niccol is doubling down on U.S. baristas writing short messages on customers’ to-go cups and bags. Starbucks last month asked baristas to resume the practice of writing on orders with markers, a practice that was disrupted during the Covid-19 pandemic and hadn’t routinely happened since.

Baristas have since flooded social media with photos of elaborate notes for customers, with some airing gripes that the drawings are slowing down service. Customers have mixed reactions, some loving the gesture and others saying they would rather have their coffee faster.

Niccol said he’s sticking with the doodles, recently receiving a smiley face on an order of Egg Bites that delighted him. “I think we should strive to do that for every customer, every transaction," he said.

He said a smaller menu will be better for business.

Say goodbye to the Starbucks doughnut, a slower-selling item that will soon be removed from company menus as part of a broader cleaning house. Niccol last month pledged to reduce the chain’s food and drink options by 30% by this fall, stirring up questions for customers over whether they are going to lose their favorite beverages.

Baristas tend to forget the recipes for drinks they rarely sell and cafes run out of the ingredients to make them, degrading the experience.

“I’m like, why are we doing this to ourselves?" Niccol said.

Starbucks will instead focus on better executing its most popular items, like lattes and cappuccinos, he said. Menu changes will begin to show up with the chain’s spring menu in March.

He thinks most orders should be done in four minutes.

Starbucks customers have complained about long order wait times, and Niccol thinks they have a point. About half of in-store orders now take longer than four minutes. Mobile orders average around six minutes to complete, he said.

Part of the problem, he said, is a system that gives priority to mobile orders over all others. Better order-sequencing tools should help, he said.

“We’re already seeing that play out, where we’ve eliminated a lot of the congestion," he said.

A recent change to move brewed coffee closer to the cash register is also resulting in baristas delivering those drinks to in-store customers faster, he said.

Condiment bars will translate to sales.

Customers often griped about Starbucks eliminating its self-service condiment bar after the pandemic struck, and the move created business problems for the company, Niccol said.

Milk and sweetener is a matter of personal taste, and when baristas made the additions themselves to coffees, they sometimes got the proportions wrong, he said.

“We found ourselves having to remake the drinks a lot because that’s a very kind of specific customization," Niccol said.

Allowing customers to doctor their drinks at condiment bars, which returned to many cafes last month, saves on waste and will bring customers back to Starbucks to spend, he said.

Write to Heather Haddon at heather.haddon@wsj.com