Starbucks Tells Corporate Staff to Work In the Office — Or Else

Starbucks may be taking a page out of Amazon (AMZN)’s book for return-to-office mandates.

This week, the Seattle-based coffee chain sent a memo out to one of its divisions ordering all corporate staff to work in the office three days per week — or else they could be fired, according to Bloomberg, which first reported the announcement.

The news comes after Amazon CEO Andy Jassy announced in September that office workers for the tech giant must return to their desks five days per week starting in 2025, one of the strictest callbacks to in-person work for a large company, as Commercial Observer previously reported.

Starbucks will follow a “standardized process” beginning in January to keep employees accountable if they don’t adhere to the hybrid work rules, with consequences including “separation,” Bloomberg cited an email as saying.

Starbucks CEO Brian Niccol, the former CEO of Chipotle, took over as head of the ubiquitous coffee chain just last month, when he conversely told employees that they could work wherever they needed to get their jobs done, Bloomberg reported. Now, Niccol appears to be changing course.

“The expectations for our hybrid partners have not changed,” a spokesperson for Starbucks said in a statement to CO. “We are continuing to support our leaders as they hold their teams accountable to our existing hybrid work policy. We’ve made updates to our workspaces to make sure they work for the teams who use them.”

Starbucks will apply its three-days-in-the-office policy to about 3,500 corporate employees, Bloomberg reported. Vacation, sick time and business travel are not included in the policy, and workers can request an exemption for various physical or mental impairments, the news outlet said.

But Starbucks staff have pushed back before. Last year, dozens of corporate employees signed a letter protesting the company’s less strict return-to-office mandate, Bloomberg reported.

And, in an ironic twist, Niccol allows for flexibility in his own work arrangement and does not have to suffer in traffic on his way to work. Every week, the CEO hitches a ride on Starbucks’ corporate jet to fly from his home in Newport Beach, Calif., to the company’s Seattle headquarters, the New York Times reported in August.

Starbucks also is providing Niccol with housing and transportation until he finds a secondary residence in Washington, according to the Times.

Niccol has received some backlash from employees and outsiders on his commute — largely from a climate standpoint — but most staff said they didn’t care where the CEO was based as long as he didn’t enforce office requirements, Bloomberg reported.

Isabelle Durso can be reached at idurso@commercialobserver.com.