The CEO of Starbucks is making a very big mistake—and it’s destroying what made the company great

Brian Niccol wants to return the world’s biggest coffeehouse to its roots, but his plan is doing the opposite. In 1983, Howard Schultz was an employee of Starbucks, a small chain of coffee stores that mainly sold beans (and no drinks), when he was sent to Milan for a trade show. As Schultz observed Italians visiting their local cafés, he loved what he saw, describing it as a “sense of community, a real sense of connection between the barista and the customer.”