Starbucks Reorganizes Senior Ranks, Amid Declining Sales

Starbucks is reshuffling senior leadership to accelerate efforts to recover from declining sales, according to Bloomberg. Mike Grams, hired last year to lead North America stores, was named chief operating officer and will now oversee store development and supply chain operations. Starbucks is merging its global brand and coffee teams to highlight coffee as central to its menu, innovation, and marketing. Michelle Burns will now report to Chief Brand Officer Tressie Lieberman under the new structure. Starbucks will have CTO Deb Hall Lefevre report to new CFO Cathy Smith to accelerate tech rollouts to improve service speed, such as drink-order algorithms. The coffee giant is making organizational changes to speed up its turnaround after weak quarterly results. Starbucks shares were flat in after-hours trading Wednesday and are down 3.4% this year, trailing the S&P 500’s 1.5% gain.