Biography | Brian Niccol — The Ninth of September These Warehouses Named Him Chairman and Chief

Starbucks did not wait for a search firm's shortlist to leak.

On 13 August 2024 the company announced that Brian Niccol would become chairman and chief executive, starting 9 September.

Laxman Narasimhan stepped down as chief executive and director the same morning.

Chief financial officer Rachel Ruggeri served as interim chief until Niccol arrived.

The announcement went out over a Seattle dateline.

The Exhibit 99.1 filed with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission preserves the 5:05 a.m. Pacific timestamp and the start date.

Reuters and Bloomberg both recorded a one-day jump of about 24 percent in Starbucks shares, the chain's largest intraday gain on record in those accounts.

Niccol left Chipotle at the end of August.

He became only the sixth person to hold the Starbucks chief-executive title in the company's fifty-plus-year history.

This building is the public headquarters.

Starbucks Center, 2401 Utah Avenue South in SoDo, began as a 1912 to 1915 Sears catalogue warehouse by George C. Nimmons.

The company occupies the converted complex; a ground-floor store still faces the street.

The pin is the announced first day in the chair, not a private office.

A visitor meets a working industrial-district campus, not a founder cottage.

The portrait attached is from June 2023, when he still ran Chipotle.

Photo: Wesley H. Brewton, Jr., public domain, via Wikimedia Commons. Portrait: Phi Delta Theta, CC BY 2.0, via Wikimedia Commons.