Transcript
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Interviewer / Analyst (0:23)
All right, Brian, congratulations on the recent quarter. Obviously, investors had been looking for some sort of sense that there would be a return to growth under your leadership. In the 13 months that you've been on the job, 1% on a same store sales basis, do you have confidence that the performance that you saw in your fiscal fourth quarter is not only going to be repeatable, but more importantly, something that you can build on for the current quarter and beyond?
Brian Chesky (Starbucks CEO) (0:48)
Yeah, remain great to be here and absolutely. We believe this was a critical moment in our turnaround plan of the Back to Starbucks strategy. You know, it was great to see. Once we got the Green Apron service standard into the business, we saw a lot of really good things happen. You know, most specifically, our partners were set up with bigger rosters, more hours, and they were able to give customers better connection, great craft products, which then translated into transaction increases as you saw in September. We have positive comps driven by those transaction gains that continued into October. And we believe we can build from here because we've got a strong operational footing and really excited about what we've got coming for holiday. So we think it was a critical moment in the fourth quarter for the turnaround of the U.S. business. And when you think about North America, the thing that's great is Canada had a great quarter as well. They were, you know, low mid single digit comp growth driven by transactions as well. And they've done a really great job there. And then when you look around the world, we had terrific successes in many markets and most notably, China had its second consecutive quarter of comp growth. So it was, it was a critical moment for us and we're optimistic about where we go from here.
Interviewer / Analyst (2:03)
You've put a lot of emphasis on service, obviously with the Green Apron project. What does that look like in terms of staffing though? I mean, you obviously have to hire more people, but more importantly, you have to retrain a lot of your existing staff as well. How, I guess receptive have they been to that and have you faced any challenges?
Brian Chesky (Starbucks CEO) (2:20)
You know, I got to give our partners a lot of credit. They really have embraced both the Back to Starbucks strategy and the Green Apron service standard. And when I'm in stores, you know, what I hear from folks is like, thank you. We're getting back to being a Great coffeehouse. Again, our baristas and partners, they love doing the craft, they love having the moments of connection with our customers and our customers love it as well. And so the fact that we've staffed the stores up and we've added more people, we've added more hours, it actually has set them up to be able to do their job, I think with excellence. And you know, it's always terrific to be able to hire more people. And when you've got great leaders in the stores, they're able to train the new people, I think, really quickly. And we've tried to keep this very focused on what we're looking for. Right. We want a great greeting when people walk in, we want a great experience at the handoff. We're working on doing these uplifts. So then our customers have great seats if they decide to stay. And we've put some technology in behind the scenes to help put order to all those orders coming in, whether it's through the drive thru mobile order or in the cafe. So, you know, we're seeing great responses from our partners and I couldn't be prouder of the progress they've made in really short order. You know, we've only been doing this since the middle of August.