Starbucks Hosts Largest Leadership Gathering Ever – CoffeeTalk

Starbucks recently invited 14,000 employees to Las Vegas for the Starbucks Leadership Experience 2025, the company’s largest ever leadership gathering under new CEO Brian Niccol. The event was part of Starbucks’ elaborate turnaround strategy, which focuses on employees first. Starbucks has been known for providing top-notch training, benefits like health insurance, paid college tuition, and company equity, even for part-time employees. However, recent years have seen Starbucks struggle to maintain that image due to new policies and lack of guidance, leading to employees feeling deserted and sales plummeting.

Starbucks is now focusing on employees by offering training, guidance, and help to turn the company around. Breakout sessions at the leadership convention included workshops designed to help store managers develop and grow their skills. A pavilion featured tasting rooms and large displays showcasing the origin of the company’s sourced coffee beans and roasting techniques. The company has also introduced specialized training in “Green Apron Service,” which emphasizes three pillars: warmly acknowledging each customer, engaging with kindness, and focusing on customer “moments” or interactions.

The goal is to give partners a clearer understanding of what great service looks like, with specific standards to guide them. To support this, Starbucks is rolling out a new playbook that provides tools for staffing, scheduling, technology, and routines. The company also announced it would expand the assistant manager role, adding at least one dedicated, full-time assistant store manager in most company-operated stores in the U.S.

Initial implementation of Starbucks’ new strategy is showing results among employees: turnover is at a record low and employee engagement scores are rising. A recent internal survey resulted in 84% of U.S. store employees—over 160,000 baristas and coffeehouse leaders—sharing feedback, the company’s highest participation rate ever. Starbucks COO Mike Grams believes that a great partner experience fuels the customer experience, and when partners feel supported, customers notice the difference too.

To learn from Starbucks’ latest turnaround effort, it is essential to remember that the key to keeping customers happy is to keep your people happy first. This can be achieved by providing the right tools, processes, and habits to do that. Providing the right tools, processes, and habits isn’t cheap or easy, but it’s what it takes to provide great service at scale and is an investment that will pay off over time.

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