Starbucks’s new CEO keeps making the jobs come to him, so he can work from home on a California beach

Oh, to be a fly on the wall when Brian Niccol negotiates his new roles.The newly named CEO of Starbucks has mastered an enviable skill: For the second time, he’s made a major career move that hasn’t required him to move from his (apparently beloved) home in Newport Beach, California. A pretty sweet perk of Niccol’s potential $100 million-plus employment package with Seattle-based Starbucks is that the company will create a “small remote office” for Niccol in the southern California coastal community—complete with an assistant of his choosing.Niccol successfully negotiated a similarly swanky deal when he became the CEO of Chipotle in 2018, though the company later moved its headquarters from Denver to Newport Beach. There’s no indication yet that Niccol will try to repeat that feat again; Starbucks has cycled through three CEOs in as many years and the coffee chain is celebrating 30 years at its Seattle headquarters.Then again, maybe there’s something in the water in Southern California. Niccol steered a successful reinvigoration of Taco Bell during his three-year tenure from the chain’s Irvine, California, headquarters—less than a 20-minute drive from Newport Beach. He left Taco Bell in 2018 to take the reins at Chipotle, and his successful legacy includes the stock surging nearly tenfold during his tenure.Jack Hartung, Chipotle’s chief financial officer, told Restaurant Business in 2020 that the company’s move from Denver to Newport Beach “was one of the scariest things I’ve ever been involved in,” before adding: “It was absolutely the right thing to do.”With these types of past successes under his belt, Niccol clearly has the upper hand in his negotiation dealings. And Starbucks was likely willing to cede to his concessions in the hopes of a similarly successful turnaround story. Prior to the announcement, Starbucks shares were down almost 20% this year.While the Southern California native has flown the coop in the past—he got his bachelor’s degree from the University of Miami and completed an MBA from the University of Chicago Booth School of Business—family may be a major motivator in staying put. The 50-year-old is married with three children, according to The Wall Street Journal. Niccol’s boss move of staying put offers a new spin on the saying, “you can take the boy out of the country, but you can’t take the country out of the boy.” And beyond having the luxury of the job coming to him, the incoming CEO won’t have to go far if he gets a hankering for a Frappuccino, or whatever his preferred beverage may be: There are six Starbucks locations in Newport Beach, with dozens more in surrounding areas.