Brian R. Niccol is an American businessman and the chairman and chief executive officer of Starbucks, a role which he started on September 9, 2024, replacing Laxman Narasimhan.

[10][11] He led a research study that identified fathers as important customer segments, helping to increase sales at Yum's Pizza Hut brand and improving the chain's market share by an additional point.

In January 2008, the pizza chain introduced the option for customers to use their mobile phone to place orders via text message or through their website.

[15] A year later, Pizza Hut released a mobile app on the iPhone, enabling customers to make meal orders remotely.

[21][22] Niccol said that the truncated name "ties in nicely with [today's] texting generation", explaining that the company wanted to make the phrase "common vernacular" for Pizza Hut.

[25] While the lawsuit was dismissed, Taco Bell sales dropped 5% in Q2 2011, which the company attributed to damaged consumer perceptions of its food.

[37] He will also receive an additional $75 million in equity grants which are designed to pay out over time and an annual cash incentive opportunity at a target of 225 per cent of his base salary.

[33] However, he refused to move the company's headquarters from Starbucks Center in Seattle to a location closer to his residence in Orange County, California.

[33] This was disappointing for Starbucks investors who had hoped that a move would revitalize the company by enabling it to draw upon the much larger Southern California talent market for its headquarters staff, as had occurred at Chipotle.

[6] Under Niccol's leadership, Chipotle closed a store in Augusta, Maine in 2022 after employees there tried to make it the company's first unionized location.

The workers filed a complaint at the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB), which ruled that the closure was an illegal act of union-busting.