Starbucks Under Strain as CEO Brian Niccol Confronts Growing Missteps

Douglas and Lee analyze why Starbucks’ CEO is their leading candidate for worst CEO of the year, pointing to strategic errors, operational setbacks, and a shifting consumer landscape.

Published December 6, 2025, 10:47am ET · 1 min read

A man in a checkered suit and white shirt speaks, framed on the right side of the screen. To his left, large white text reads 'Starbucks Under Strain as CEO Brian Niccol Confronts Growing Missteps.' In the top left corner is the green and black logo for '24/7 WALL ST.' The background is a blurred digital display showing financial numbers and charts in green, red, and white.
A news segment from 24/7 Wall St. highlights Starbucks' challenges, with a focus on CEO Brian Niccol confronting operational missteps, as a financial expert discusses the situation. © 24/7 Wall St
Douglas A. McIntyre

Douglas A. McIntyre is the co-founder, chief executive officer and editor in chief of 24/7 Wall St. and 24/7 Tempo. He has held these jobs since 2006.

McIntyre has written thousands of articles for 24/7 Wall St. He is an expert on corporate finance, the automotive industry, media companies and international finance. He has edited articles on national demographics, sports, personal income and travel.

His work has been quoted or mentioned in The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, Los Angeles Times, The Washington Post, NBC News, Time, The New Yorker, HuffPost USA Today, Business Insider, Yahoo, AOL, MarketWatch, The Atlantic, Bloomberg, New York Post, Chicago Tribune, Forbes, The Guardian and many other major publications. McIntyre has been a guest on CNBC, the BBC and television and radio stations across the country.

A magna cum laude graduate of Harvard College, McIntyre also was president of The Harvard Advocate. Founded in 1866, the Advocate is the oldest college publication in the United States.

TheStreet.com, Comps.com and Edgar Online are some of the public companies for which McIntyre served on the board of directors. He was a Vicinity Corporation board member when the company was sold to Microsoft in 2002. He served on the audit committees of some of these companies.

McIntyre has been the CEO of FutureSource, a provider of trading terminals and news to commodities and futures traders. He was president of Switchboard, the online phone directory company. He served as chairman and CEO of On2 Technologies, the video compression company that provided video compression software for Adobe’s Flash. Google bought On2 in 2009.

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