Staffing

How Starbucks’ new leadership role could help more women advance in the restaurant industry

The coffee chain will hire over 300 coffeehouse coaches over the next month, with thousands more by the end of the calendar year. It could be a huge step to getting more women into restaurant leadership.

Photo: Starbucks

June 23, 2026 by Cherryh Cansler — Publisher, FastCasual.com

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Women make up the majority of the restaurant workforce, but that representation still drops sharply at the leadership and C-suite levels.

Starbucks latest move — the nationwide rollout of its new coffeehouse coach role — may offer a practical solution. Designed as a clear, structured first step into leadership, the role creates a more accessible pathway for frontline employees to advance. And if scaled effectively, it could help more women move from hourly roles into leadership positions, addressing one of the industry's most persistent gaps.

Because if you look at the restaurant industry broadly, women are everywhere. They're running shifts, leading teams, holding stores together during the hardest dayparts. In many brands, they make up the majority of the workforce.

And yet, somewhere between store-level leadership and the C-suite, that representation drops off. Fast.

That's why this latest move from Starbucks caught my attention — not just as an operational strategy, but as a potential unlock.

The coffee giant will hire over 300 coaches in the next month and thousands by year-end. On paper, it's about strengthening store-level leadership, improving consistency and giving managers more support across dayparts, but it also offers clearly defined, accessible first step into leadership.

And that matters more than we talk about.

Barriers for women in restaurant leadership

One of the biggest barriers I see — especially for women in this industry — isn't capability. It's clarity. It's knowing what the next step is, how to get there and whether it's even attainable.

Too often, the jump from hourly roles to leadership feels like a leap, not a ladder.

What Starbucks is doing here is inserting a rung.

The coffeehouse coach role creates a structured path: a full-time position, better pay, leadership responsibility and — most importantly — real-time coaching experience. It's designed for baristas to move into within two to three years.

That's not accidental. That's intentional pipeline building.

And early results suggest it's working. Over than 90% of these roles in the pilot were filled internally. That tells me two things: the talent is already there, and when you create the right pathway, people step into it.

It just got interesting

Here's where I think this gets especially interesting for the broader industry.

If women already make up the majority of hourly and frontline roles, then roles like this could disproportionately benefit them — not through mandates or quotas, but through access.

Give people a clear, supported entry point into leadership, and you naturally start to shift who moves up.

It also addresses another issue we don't talk about enough: sustainability of leadership roles. When store leaders are stretched too thin, constantly covering every daypart, the job becomes less appealing — especially for those balancing responsibilities outside of work.

Adding a second layer of leadership doesn't just improve operations. It makes leadership itself more livable.

And that's critical if we want more diverse leadership at the top.

Starbucks has also doubled down on its commitment to fill 90% of retail leadership roles internally. Pair that with programs like its College Achievement Plan, and you start to see a more complete ecosystem — not just hiring leaders, but growing them.

Is this a perfect solution? No, but it's a meaningful one; because the industry doesn't have a talent problem. It has a pathway problem.

And if more brands start thinking this way — building intentional, visible, achievable steps into leadership, we may finally start to see that gap close between who works in restaurants and who leads them.

From where I sit, that's the real story here.

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About Cherryh Cansler

Cherryh Cansler is Publisher of FastCasual.com and Vice President of Connect Food. She has been covering the restaurant industry since 2012. Her byline has appeared in Forbes, The Kansas City Star and American Fitness magazine, among many others.

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