Is Brian Niccol the worst CEO for long term brand health? ($SBUX)

At Chipotle he raised prices four times between 2021-2023, while he quietly cut quality, ruined the brand, and shrank the portions. Pocketed over $100M across his tenure while the stock ran 773% due to his short term strategy and before demand could decrease. Then left as the shrinkflation backlash went viral. People caught on to the horrible quality and the labor cost cuts as well. Same-store sales fell 1.7% in 2025, first annual decline since 2016, stock down 37%.

At Starbucks the short-term playbook is different but the structural problem is identical. He's buying traffic with labor wages and benefits rose from 27.4% of sales in 2019 to 31.9% in 2025 and it's working. Q2 just posted 7.1% same store sales growth, the strongest traffic performance in three years. But operating margin has collapsed from 15.4% in 2019 to 7.9% in 2025. He's admitted the company needs to cut $2 billion in costs to get back to pre pandemic margins by 2028.

Here's the trap: the traffic recovery is built on more baristas and better experience. The moment he cuts labor to recover margins, the experience degrades and the customers leave again. He's explicitly ruled out discounting, coffee prices are up 18% year on year, and a $9 latte has a ceiling.

My guess is the 2028 margin targets slip, the narrative breaks, and he's gone leaving whoever comes next to explain why the turnaround didn't actually fix anything structural.

PS: Taco Bell is the outlier genuine turnaround, held up after he left. Everything since follows the same arc. But I don't think he had the clout to be able to do that then.

Just a thought happy to be wrong but just a trend I noticed but not tons of data points don't know how many companies this man plans being the CEO.