Starbucks’ CEO has a new right-hand woman in his bid to turn around the struggling coffee chain
Cathy Smith came to Starbucks from Target and Nordstrom.
Good morning! Public media groups condemn federal funding cut, Ketanji Brown Jackson speaks on judicial attacks from Trump administration, and a new exec joins the Starbucks turnaround.
- Jolt of energy. Since taking over as Starbucks' CEO in September, former Chipotle boss Brian Niccol has been executing a turnaround plan for the once-beloved coffee chain. He cut menu items by 30% and instructed baristas to start writing messages on cups, changes intended to simplify store operations and bring back customers' feelings of connection.
Now, Niccol has a new right-hand woman in this mission. Cathy Smith is Starbucks' new CFO, and my colleague Phil Wahba had one of the first interviews with her before she made her earnings call debut last week. (Revenues rose 2.3% to $8.7 billion. Niccol told Wall Street that the chain is "building back a better business.")
Smith has been part of multiple turnarounds—at brands that Phil describes as having "lost sight of what customers loved about them, but which still had large reservoirs of goodwill to draw upon." She led finance at Nordstrom while the retailer was going private and was at Target between 2015 and 2019, when the retailer needed to redo many of its stores.
"All brands drift over time, and I have pattern recognition," Smith says. "I’ve seen this with a number of brands, and the great ones recapture what made them great."
Smith gets into the weeds. Before taking the Target job, she took her family on a road trip to 65 Target stores in 10 states, Phil reports. She has taken a similar approach at Starbucks, visiting a coffee roasting plant, a distribution center, corporate HQ, and with plans to serve customers as a barista in store.
"I see where the brand is today," Smith says. "It should be the Starbucks I remember, and it can be so much more.”
Read Phil's full story here.
Emma Hinchliffe
emma.hinchliffe@fortune.com
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