There was a time, back in the mid-2010s, when Starbucks was in its prime. It was an era characterized by handwritten notes on cups, signature purple chairs, and coffee houses teeming with people sitting down to enjoy a morning pick-me-up. Starbucks CEO Brian Niccol wants to revive that era—starting by adding hundreds of thousands of chairs back into its stores.

“When it’s truly a third place, I think that’s our point of difference,” Niccol told audiences at the Fast Company Innovation Festival on September 16. “It’s why people fell in love with Starbucks. It’s why I fell in love with Starbucks 20 years ago.”

Since those early days, Niccol added, Starbucks has become “very transactional.” Post-pandemic, the company’s business model has been increasingly focused on mobile ordering; a system that’s transformed the coffee house from a sit-down experience to something more like an endless, harried line. Niccol’s plan to turn the company around, called “Back to Starbucks,” hinges on the thesis that Starbucks is suffering from an overarching design problem—and it’s using a design-led approach to make the Starbucks experience actually enjoyable again.

Starbucks to add “hundreds of thousands” of new seats in stores

In July 2024, Niccol was in between jobs. The restaurant industry executive had just exited his role at the helm of Chipotle, and was weeks away from starting his new gig at Starbucks. In the intervening time, he decided to visit as many Starbucks stores as possible—and what he saw was eye-opening.

“I walked into stores, and outlets were covered. There weren’t enough seats. It was clear that we had prioritized a waiting area for mobile order,” Niccol said, adding, “We had done some things that did not deliver on having a great in-cafe experience.”

The last several years have been fairly lackluster for Starbucks. Niccol told Fast Company in a recent interview that the once-dominant chain’s transactions peaked around 2019 and have remained fairly stagnant ever since. Starbucks brought in $36 billion in fiscal year 2024—nearly flat with 2023—by bumping costs to make up for dwindling customers. Other players, including the Chinese competitor Luckin Coffee and brands like Blank Street, Dunkin’, and Dutch Bros, are slowly eating into Starbucks’ market share with creative, Gen Z-centric beverages.

So, Niccol is setting out to redesign the entire Starbucks experience. Already, he’s brought back personalized touches like handwritten notes on cups and in-store condiment bars, as well as investing in new menu innovations for younger customers. And bigger changes are on the way: In the coming months, he said he plans to redesign 1,000 of Starbucks’s 11,000 company-operated cafés in North America; revamp the brand’s pastry menu to offer more artisanal, protein-forward options; and bring ceramic mugs back to cafes. 

Perhaps most notably, Niccol told audiences that he’s reinstating the company’s signature seating to the tune of “hundreds of thousands” of new seats in stores—a major increase from his former estimate of 30,000 new seats. While these won’t be the familiar purple seats of old, Niccol said they will be “a contemporary version of that signature chair.” Ultimately, he wants Starbucks to return to an institution that customers actually want to spend time in, rather than an experience to be endured. 

“I hear over and over and over again that the connection between the barista and our customers is unlike anything else,” Niccol said. “There are these examples where people walk in and the barista knows them so well that they’ve already made their drink before they’ve gotten to the [point of sale]. I wish every single one of our transactions was that intimate, that personal. That’s what we need to get to.”