Brian Niccol said he wants Starbucks to feel like the coffee shop from ‘Friends’

• Starbucks CEO Brian Niccol said a fictional café guided his vision of what his stores should look like.
• He said he described the coffee shop from “Friends” as being the ideal café experience.
• Niccol has spent more than a year trying to revitalize the brand and turn it into a cozy third space.

Starbucks CEO Brian Niccol wants his cafés to feel like Central Perk from the TV show ‘Friends.’

During an interview with The Wall Street Journal, released Monday, Niccol spoke about his “Back to Starbucks” plan, a yearlong process of turning around the brand after several quarters of declining sales amid a deteriorating customer experience.

He told Alan Murray, president of The WSJ Leadership Institute, that the name “Back to Starbucks” helped to give his baristas a “visual understanding” of the café experience he was trying to achieve.

“Because everybody remembers a ‘Friends’ episode, or that coffee house experience, by me saying ‘Back to Starbucks,’ that kind of hearkens that memory of what I would call the barista-customer connection that we’re after,” Niccol said.

The coffee shop from the ‘Friends,’ Central Perk, was a pivotal set piece throughout the sitcom’s 10-season run. Almost every episode featured the café as the characters’ favorite haunt.

The cast was often filmed sitting on Central Perk’s mismatched sofas and chairs, ordering coffee and baked goods, and making small talk with the awkward manager, Gunther.

Niccol’s comparison of Central Perk to Starbucks comes after he spent more than a year rebranding Starbucks, from what customers and employees said was a soulless conglomerate chain, to a warm and inviting third place. He took the top job in September 2024.

He simplified the menu, introduced more seating and tables in the cafés, offered free coffee and tea refills, brought back the condiment station and ceramic mugs, and encouraged baristas to write small notes on coffee cups to interact with their customers.

However, its sales have yet to see a strong recovery. It reported a 1% increase in its global comparable sales for the fourth quarter of this year, compared to the same period last year. Its stock price is down more than 6% since the start of the year.

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