Starbucks CEO and President Kevin Johnson is retiring after a 13-year tenure at the company, including the last five years as CEO, according to a company press release.

Starbucks founder and former CEO Howard Schultz will serve as interim CEO and will rejoin the company's Board of Directors as of April 4 when Johnson steps down. Johnson will continue to serve as a Starbucks and special consultant through September, however, and the board will select Johnson's replacement by the fall.

"On behalf of the entire Board, I want to express our sincerest thanks to Kevin for his leadership of Starbucks," Mellody Hobson, Independent Starbucks Board of Directors chair, said in the release. "Kevin and the entire executive team stepped up to the challenge of the pandemic and navigated one of the most difficult periods in modern history. The economic certainty provided to partners during the early months of the COVID shut down, as well as during mandatory quarantines, underscores our core values and will be an enduring legacy for the company. During Kevin's tenure, Starbucks scaled an industry leading digital offering spanning nearly 45 million Starbucks Rewards members in the U.S. and China."

Johnson, who has served on the Starbucks Board of Directors since 2009, joined the leadership team in 2015 as president and chief operating officer. In 2017, he was named president and chief executive officer, succeeding founder Schultz.

"A year ago, I signaled to the Board that as the global pandemic neared an end, I would be considering retirement from Starbucks," Johnson said in the release. "I feel this is a natural bookend to my 13 years with the company. As I make this transition, we are very fortunate to have a founder who is able to step in on an interim basis, giving the Board time to further explore potential candidates and make the right long-term succession decision for the company."

I have enjoyed every minute of the job and am proud of what we have achieved together. It has been an honor to serve the 400,000 Starbucks green apron partners around the world and I want to thank them for their service, resilience and optimism."

Hobson and Johnson will provide an update to shareholders during the 2022 Starbucks Annual Meeting of Shareholders webcast later today. The Board of Directors has formed a working committee to oversee the CEO search process which is ongoing and yielding a strong slate of potential candidates.

"For 50 years, Starbucks has been relentlessly focused on exceeding the expectations of our people and our customers, while delivering best-in-class financial performance," said Hobson. "As the company navigates the aftermath of the pandemic and socio-economic forces impacting the lives of all our stakeholders, Howard will reinforce the company's culture, underscoring the organization's commitment to innovating and executing on our core purpose and reason for being: to inspire and nurture the human spirit—one person, one cup and one neighborhood at a time."

As interim CEO, Schultz will focus on setting an innovation framework, while also coaching and onboarding the next permanent CEO of Starbucks.

"Our success is not an entitlement. We must continue to earn the trust of our people and our customers every day by how we deliver the Starbucks Experience, how we treat each other and how we act as a responsible community member and corporate citizen. With the backdrop of COVID recovery and global unrest, it's critical we set the table for a courageous reimagining and reinvention of the future Starbucks experience for our partners and customers," said Schultz.

Starbucks Coffee Company has over 34,000 stores worldwide.

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