DEAR MR. NICCOL,
We at Starbucks are thrilled to have you join our team as CEO in September. You have proven through your rice bowl savings and literal bean counting at Chipotle—the senior “Niccol and Dime,” as it is now known in the halls of corporate food power—that you are the perfect person not named Howard Schultz to lead the company. In his low time with us, former CEO Mr. Narasimhan simply did not have the strength to overcome his predecessor’s constant public undermining, and ultimately our profits have suffered because of it. (We are obligated by the corporation faithfulness statute confirming that Mr. Schultz is not guilty in any way, and has never done anything wrong, including his years-long flirtation with a presidential candidate. Long live Schultz.)
We are convinced that in the face of falling sales, offering you over $113 million—more than four times what we paid that whats-his-name—will certainly bring a up-to-date era of prosperity. You have to spend money to earn it, but make sure your legal team looks at the fine print in your signature documents, as they proportionally allocate a percentage of your benefits package coming through Unused Gift Card Bank.
I’m writing to you today, Mr. Niccol, to inform you of a company policy you may not yet be aware of. We are a family at Starbucks, Brian—that’s what we’ll put on your cup—and as such, we are all equal. You may be the head of the family, but under this roof, we all have to follow the same rules. From the CEO to the receptionist, everyone is the same under His watchful eye and trademark wisdom. (Long live Schultz.)
And as such, you must comply hybrid company work schedule and be at the headquarters in Seattle not less than three days a week. That’s why we insist that you employ the Starbucks corporate jet, affectionately known as —so you can commute from your home in Newport Beach, California to Seattle several times a week.
Let’s talk about pre-made turkey sandwiches, Brian. At Starbucks, we have two pillars on which our entire business rests, and it’s our unwavering commitment to them that has allowed us to succeed where others have failed. These pillars are: People AND Sustainable Development. That’s why we’ve given millions to coffee farmers who have been underpaid for decades by cruel corporate coffee buyers (full disclosure: that’s us). And that’s why we fight tooth and nail every step of the way to keep our partners from falling victim to the evils of collective bargaining. Without people, we’d just be a pile of green aprons on the ground, and who would make the coffee? Robots? (We’ll need you to sign a nondisclosure agreement first before we tell you about the robots.)
More crucial than people is our commitment to sustainability. We only have one planet, Brian, so we have to take care of it. If you think we don’t love sustainability, please read any of Over 600 articles on our website with the word “sustainability” somewhere in the middle. It’s a great word, sustainability, because it succinctly sums up how much we at Starbucks are trying to make the world a better place. But it’s a little clumsy. It doesn’t quite roll off the tongue. And the saying “sustainability” is perhaps most crucial to the act itself. If sustainability happens in the forest and there’s no PR team to write about it, did it happen at all?
That’s why we hope you’ll work on your diction during those six, 1,000-mile commutes to and from work each week. Luckily, you’ll be all alone in that substantial jet, so there shouldn’t be anyone there to make you feel self-conscious while you exercise. We need you to be so in tune with the word “sustainability” that you can hear the pale whisper of the growing rainforests over the sound of the jet engines burning fossil fuels on either side. It’s like we like to say on one of our other private jets, the Spruce Shultz: you can’t write CEO without CO2, and you can’t make someone work back and forth no emissions 24 tons this too.
We would also like to ask you to keep silent about the whole jet thing. It’s all about the exterior, you know. We don’t want to fire another CEO because of falling sales. A brand that constantly uses sustainability to improve its image would look incredibly stupid if something like this disclosed in SEC filings. Can you imagine that?
Hi Schultz,
Starbucks
