Brian Niccol, who took over at Chipotle when the restaurant business was in trouble, takes over as CEO of Starbucks

Starbucks said on Tuesday that Brian Niccol, the chairman and CEO of Chipotle, will take over as CEO in place of Laxman Narasimhan, the company’s flagging sales and irate investors.

Narasimhan, who oversaw Starbucks for just over a year, will leave the company immediately, the massive coffee chain in Seattle announced. On September 9, Niccol will take over as chairman and CEO of Starbucks. Until then, interim CEO Rachel Ruggeri will be the chief financial officer.

Tuesday’s opening session saw a more than 21% increase in Starbucks Corp. shares.

In March 2023, Narasimhan, a veteran PepsiCo executive who has also held the position of CEO of the U.K. consumer health giant Reckitt, was appointed CEO of Starbucks. He replaced veteran Starbucks executive and chairman emeritus Howard Schultz, who stepped out of retirement in 2022 to take on the role of acting CEO in the meantime.

However, as sales declined and Starbucks confronted with a number of problems, such as entry by less expensive competitors in China and boycotts in the Middle East and other regions due to the Israel-Hamas conflict, investors and the corporate board soon lost interest in Narasimhan.

For the first time since the end of 2020, Starbucks had a 2% fall in revenue during the first three months of this year. Starbucks founder and Chairman Emeritus Howard Schultz criticized the company’s leadership in a spring LinkedIn post, stating that in order to boost declining sales, executives should spend more time in shops and concentrate on coffee drinks.