The Starbucks CEO’s New Commute: 1,000 Miles on a Corporate Jet

There is perhaps nothing that unites the foot soldiers of capitalism like the universally agitating experience of commuting: sitting in traffic for hours; getting sweaty on (often-delayed) subways; suffering through mediocre bike lanes and threats of congestion pricing.

Brian Niccol, the newly minted CEO of Starbucks, has found a personal solution: a 1,000-mile commute from his home in Newport Beach, California, to the company’s headquarters in Seattle, on Starbucks’ corporate plane.

Niccol is the latest of the American supercommuting chief executives, a trend that has been on the rise since the turn of the millennium but has found increased attention since the coronavirus pandemic thrust remote work into the mainstream. Starbucks’ concessions to Niccol also underscore just how much companies are willing to bend in order to woo big-time executives — and how much leeway they have to do so, as corporate culture continues to adjust to post-pandemic norms.

The details of Niccol’s employment terms became public after Starbucks filed his offer letter and contract with the Securities and Exchange Commission. According to his contract, he will be offered use of the company’s corporate jet to commute to Seattle, and will be provided housing and transportation for three months, or until he secures a secondary residence in Washington state.

Niccol, who left his job as chief executive of the Chipotle restaurant franchise for his new position, was highly sought by Starbucks. Niccol’s sudden hire this month prompted an immediate 25% surge in Starbucks’ stock price — a gain of $20 billion in market value.

Stacked against the occasional cost of a corporate jet flight, the trade-off is one that large companies like Starbucks are increasingly willing to make, especially for executives who can so quickly provide value. Last week, Victoria’s Secret announced. that it had poached Hillary Super from Rihanna’s lingerie company, Savage X Fenty, and that she would remain at the company’s New York office rather than relocate to its headquarters in Columbus, Ohio.

That announcement, too, immediately buoyed Victoria’s Secret stock prices. According to Super’s contract, she, too, will commute to Ohio regularly on the company’s dime.

“Remote work for CEOs is one of the tools you can use to recruit a new CEO who might not be willing to relocate to the company’s headquarters,” said Denis Sosyura, a professor of finance at Arizona State University who studies corporate governance. “If you have a CEO who really likes living in Southern California, it’s very difficult to recruit them away.”

This article originally appeared in The New York Times .