Starbucks Mulls Buying Chipotle: Report

Starbucks has worked with advisers in recent months on a takeover proposal for Chipotle Mexican Grill, the Financial Times reports. Coverage by that newspaper, along with follow-ups by other news sources, detailed the pros and cons underlying such a major tie-up.

CNBC.com, for instance, noted that Starbucks CEO Brian Niccol “knows more than a thing or two about Chipotle. Before joining the coffee company in 2024, he was chief executive of Chipotle for more than six years. He led a turnaround of the burrito chain, helping it bounce back from a series of foodborne illness outbreaks that had turned into a full-blown crisis for the company.”

But on the other side of the coin, CNBC reported that while Niccol worked on turnarounds at Chipotle and Starbucks, “his corporate experience so far has not prepared him for a deal of this size.

“Merging two colossal restaurant companies would be a massive undertaking, potentially at the expense of the individual success of both brands.”

Another potential plus: Starbucks could help Chipotle grow more quickly in international markets; the burrito chain only has about 100 locations outside of the U.S., while Starbucks has about 23,000, CNBC noted.

That news service said other factors analysts and observers have looked at include whether such a hook-up would produce any meaningful operational synergies, and whether the price tag for pulling it off might prove too steep to make sense to investors.

In a statement released after the FT story was published, Starbucks told NBC News and other outlets that “our team is laser-focused on executing our ‘Back to Starbucks’ strategy,” and that it typically doesn’t comment on what it described as “rumors and speculation.” As for Chipotle: as of this posting, it wasn’t commenting on the FT report.