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What does it mean to be a courageous leader in 2025? Stanley McChrystal, retired four-star general in the U.S. Army, joins futurist and culture critic Baratunde Thurston to discuss McChrystal’s new book, On Character, the responsibility of leaders today, and the weight of being an active citizen in democracy. Considering President The President’s deployment of the National Guard, McChrystal explores the role of the military in civil society. This is an abridged transcript of an interview from Rapid Response, recorded live at the 2025 Masters of Scale Summit in San Francisco. From the team behind the Masters of Scale podcast, Rapid Response features candid conversatio…

Visitors to dozens of Starbucks stores across more than 40 cities may be greeted with picket lines today as Starbucks baristas go on strike. And it’s a strike that couldn’t come at a worse time for Starbucks, as today is the company’s annual Red Cup Day, which kicks off the Seattle coffee giant’s holiday sales season. Here’s what to know: What’s happened? Today, unionized Starbucks baristas went on strike at more than 65 Starbucks locations across 42 cities. The baristas are members of the Starbucks Workers Union (SBWU), a collective that says it includes over 12,000 Starbucks workers across 550 unionized stores. The union says it has been in stalled negoti…

Starbucks’s new CEO, Brian Niccol, made a bet last September that the company could draw customers back into its stores by reintroducing personal touches you might see at smaller, third-place sort of coffee shops, like handwritten names on to-go cups. Here we are about four months later, and Starbucks has beaten Wall Street expectations, announcing $9.4 billion in revenue for the fourth quarter of last year during its earnings call Tuesday. Niccol attributed the chain’s performance to “getting Back to Starbucks and those things that have always set us apart.” (Though it’s worth noting that the company’s sales are still down year over year.) Starbucks developed a b…

Starbucks released its fourth-quarter earnings on Wednesday, October 30, finally providing an official figure for its recent wave of store closings. The Seattle-based coffee chain shuttered a total of 627 locations worldwide over the three months, ending up with a net closure of 107 stores. More than 90% of impacted locations were in North America, Starbucks said. In the United States, 520 stores were shuttered as part of the company’s turnaround efforts, Starbucks disclosed in an earnings release. Starbucks now runs 40,990 stores globally and 16,864 in the United States. Estimates of store closures varied widely In September, Starbucks announced the shutt…

Starbucks held its quarterly earnings call Tuesday, during which CEO Brian Niccol highlighted a slew of design steps the company is taking as part of its overall turnaround strategy. While Niccols described the company’s drop in quarterly earnings as “disappointing,” behind the scenes, he claims the coffee chain is still making progress towards its back-to-basics comeback plan by upgrading its coffeehouses, standardizing the Starbucks experience store to store, and more efficient systems. All of this will begin to roll out over the next few months. Here’s a rundown of the design changes so far, and what’s heating up for next quarter. 1. Coffeeshop “uplif…

Starbucks’s reign as the world’s leading coffee company is faltering. And the new CEO, Brian Niccol, wants to fix it. Mark Wilson explains. View the full article

Starbucks will end the year with fewer stores and fewer employees. But the brand maintains that it’s all part of a greater turnaround still in the mix. Today, the company announced that its North American store locations will be reduced by 1% for fiscal 2025—landing the coffee chain at 18,300 stores total. And it will be eliminating 900 jobs outside of its coffee houses (in other words, corporate and other functions). The company claims it will attempt to place affected baristas into new stores, but Starbucks says, “For those we can’t immediately place, we’re focused on partner care including comprehensive severance packages. We also hope to welcome many of …

Starbucks is brewing up something new in Texas—and this time, it’s not just what’s in the cup. Next week, the coffee giant will open its first-ever 3D-printed store, a drive-thru-only location in Brownsville that looks more like the future of construction than your average café. Built with layers of concrete piped out by a giant robotic printer, the 1,400-square-foot structure is part of the company’s ongoing effort to modernize operations and trim costs. But does a 3D-printed café actually save money—or is this just a buzzworthy experiment? Is 3D-printing more cost-effective? Peri-3D, a German company, used a giant 3D printer to pump out layers of concrete mi…

When Starbucks announced that it would phase out its mobile-order pickup-only locations beginning in 2026, it raised a question: Why abandon a format seemingly built for speed and efficiency? As Starbucks CEO Brian Niccol explained in an earnings call, the pickup-only stores have a “transactional” feel, lacking “the warmth and human connection that defines our brand.” While Niccol also touted the mobile-order options at its traditional coffee shops, I see Starbucks’s move as an attempt to return to its roots as a “third place”—a destination between home and work where people can gather and connect. But this sort of pivot comes with trade-offs, and it creates i…

Shares in coffee giant Starbucks Corporation (Nasdaq: SBUX) are down significantly in premarket trading this morning after the chain announced its Q2 2025 earnings results yesterday after the bell. Those results were described as “disappointing” by Starbucks’s own CEO, Brian Niccol, and demonstrate that the company’s turnaround efforts still have a long way to go. Here’s the latest on Starbucks and what has investors nervous: Starbucks Q2 2025 results below expectations In January of this year, Starbucks announced its Q1 2025 earnings, in which it beat Wall Street expectations—a small win for the company and for Niccol, who joined as CEO from Chipotle Mexican …

On the heels of Starbucks’ recent announcement it will be cutting 900 corporate roles and closing 1% of its Northern American stores by the end of 2025 (after accounting for both new openings and closures), Starbucks Workers United said Tuesday that 59 of those locations marked for closure are unionized locations. Starbucks Workers United, the worker-led effort to unionize Starbucks baristas, represents 12,000 baristas in 45 states and Washington D.C., across more than 650 cafes. The closures, announced last week by CEO Brian Niccol, are part of a massive $1 billion restructuring strategy dubbed “Back to Starbucks,” aimed at turning around declining sales and bran…

On September 25, Starbucks CEO Brian Niccol informed his employees in a public memo that the company would be cutting 900 corporate roles and closing down stores. However, the memo didn’t share exactly how many stores would close and where they’re located—leaving employees scrambling to compile that information on their own. Starbucks is framing the restructuring as a part of Niccol’s broader “Back to Starbucks” plan, a sweeping initiative designed to return Starbucks to its heyday in the mid-2010s. That includes redesigning store interiors, rethinking menus, and making the ordering experience feel less “transactional.” As of right now, Starbucks is still on …

Starbucks is shaking things up with a new approach to its cold drink cups. Instead of the usual clear plastic, many locations are now serving iced drinks in cold compostable cups—a big step toward cutting down on plastic waste. The switch officially rolled out on February 11 across 14 states, according to Fox Business. A Starbucks spokesperson confirmed that the company “switched to commercially compostable cups and lids as part of our efforts to reduce waste and meet local market requirements.” Right now, about 580 stores have made the change, which is just a small fraction of Starbucks’ 17,000+ locations in the U.S. But if you’re grabbing an iced coffee in Calif…

Starbucks plans to lay off 1,100 corporate employees and eliminate hundreds of open and unfilled positions, CEO Brian Niccol said on Monday. In a memo, Niccol said the cuts will remove duplication “to create smaller, more nimble teams,” and the company will inform employees who are being laid off by midday Tuesday. Starbucks, which has 16,000 corporate employees, said the cuts will not affect staff at cafés. “We believe it’s a necessary change to position Starbucks for future success,” Niccol said in the statement. “Our intent is to operate more efficiently, increase accountability, reduce complexity, and drive better integration.” Shares of the coffee giant (…

Starbucks will pay about $35 million to more than 15,000 New York City workers to settle claims it denied them stable schedules and arbitrarily cut their hours, city officials announced Monday. The company will also pay $3.4 million in civil penalties under the agreement with the city’s Department of Consumer and Worker Protection. It also agrees to comply with the city’s Fair Workweek law going forward. A company spokeswoman said Starbucks is committed to operating responsibly and in compliance with all applicable local laws and regulations in every market where it does business, but also noted the complexitiesc of the city’s law. “This (law) is notoriously c…

Starbucks‘ chief technology officer Deb Hall Lefevre resigned without a permanent replacement, according to an internal memo sent to corporate staff on Monday, seen by Reuters. The memo, written by Chief Financial Officer Cathy Smith, named Ningyu Chen, previously senior vice president of global experience technology, as interim chief technology officer. Lefevre’s resignation comes as Starbucks announced its second round of deep cuts in corporate roles, effective Friday, as CEO Brian Niccol pushes a tech revamp in stores to make labor more efficient, part of a turnaround strategy to revive flagging sales after six consecutive quarters of decline. Using AI to…

Whatever happens next at Starbucks will be studied for decades to come. The world’s largest coffee chain has faced six quarters of declining same-store sales. But for the last year, its new chairman and CEO, Brian Niccol—the surest bet in the restaurant industry—has been architecting a turnaround. Hot off turnarounds at Yum Brands with Pizza Hut and Taco Bell, which he followed up by modernizing burrito building at Chipotle, Niccol has proven himself to be both a master marketer and operations expert. Which is why, when he announced that his strategy for Starbucks was to revive the third place, even some of Niccol’s fans were skeptical he could pull it off. E…

Starbucks baristas will soon have a new dress code that’s meant to center the coffee chain’s signature brand color. Beginning May 12, employees will be required to wear solid black tops along with bottoms that are khaki, black, or blue denim under the coffee chain’s longtime signature-green apron. Starbucks Green is a rich, earthy green that appears in Starbucks partner aprons going back to 1987, and it’s also the color of its well-known Siren logo. The company calls the color its “most identifiable asset,” and by putting the color at the center of its new dress code, the coffee chain is extending its brand guidelines around Starbucks Green to employee dress as the co…

SpaceX’s Starlink orbital internet satellites are falling out of low earth orbit at an increasingly alarming rate, with one to two satellites now reentering Earth’s atmosphere every single day. According to Harvard-Smithsonian Center astrophysicist Jonathan McDowell, that number will only go up as more satellites end their useful lifetime and the low earth orbit (LEO) constellation numbers skyrocket. This is as much a design problem as anything. While the numbers vary, right now there are around 10,200 active satellites in low earth orbit. Of those, about 8,475 are Starlinks. In other words, about 80% of all those satellites belong to Elon Musk’s company. By 2030,…

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Have you ever been to the Gamerhood? Part game show, part reality series, it recently wrapped its fourth season in August. Over five weekly episodes on Twitch and YouTube, the show pitted gaming creators like Kai Cenat, Ludwig, Mark Phillips, and Berleezy, against each other in a combination of gaming and IRL challenges. The third season from last summer attracted more than 23 million views. In September, the show went mainstream when season four landed on Prime Video. Even before that, just on YouTube and Twitch, season four was getting about 20 million views for each episode. Not too shabby for a show created by a brand. That’s right, Gamerhood is fully owned by St…

To tax tips or not? That is a question that will confront lawmakers in states across the U.S. as they convene for work next year. President Donald The President’s administration is urging states to follow its lead by enacting a slew of new tax breaks for individuals and businesses, including deductions for tips and overtime wages, automobile loans, and business equipment. In some states, the new federal tax breaks will automatically apply to state income taxes unless legislatures opt out. But in many other states, where tax laws are written differently, the new tax breaks won’t appear on state tax forms unless legislatures opt in. In states that don’t conform …

Across the U.S., more schools are implementing policies restricting cellphones as concerns about digital distraction, mental health, and academic performance rise. The scale of the issue is significant. According to a 2023 report from Common Sense Media, 97% of students between the ages of 11 and 17 use their cellphones at least once during the school day. These students spend a median of 43 minutes online each day during school hours. Social media, YouTube, and gaming were the students’ top cellphone uses. Schools have already begun taking action. Data from the National Center for Education Statistics published in 2025 shows that 77% of public schools ban cellpho…