Starbucks Abandons Olive Oil-Infused Coffee Line Oleato in North America

Summary

Starbucks will remove the olive oil-infused cof­fee bev­er­age Oleato from its U.S. and Canadian loca­tions due to falling sales, with the com­pany also sus­pend­ing its 2025 fis­cal year out­look. The deci­sion comes as new chief exec­u­tive Brian Niccol aims to stream­line the menu and improve cus­tomer expe­ri­ence to drive growth, despite mixed reviews and skep­ti­cism sur­round­ing the bev­er­age.

Nineteen months after Oleato arrived in the United States, Starbucks will remove the olive oil-infused cof­fee bev­er­age from its U.S. and Canadian loca­tions.

The deci­sion comes as the com­pany announced a third con­sec­u­tive quar­ter of falling sales fueled by a ten-per­cent decline in North America. Starbucks also sus­pended a pre­vi­ously planned out­look for the 2025 fis­cal year.

“It is clear we need to fun­da­men­tally change our strat­egy to win back cus­tomers,” newly installed chief exec­u­tive Brian Niccol told investors on a con­fer­ence call where he out­lined plans to stream­line the company’s sprawl­ing menu and speed up ser­vice by sim­pli­fy­ing baris­tas’ jobs.

“My expe­ri­ence tells me that when we get back to our core iden­tity and con­sis­tently deliver a great expe­ri­ence, our cus­tomers will come back,” the for­mer Pizza Hut, Taco Bell and Chipotle Mexican Grill exec­u­tive added. ​“We have a clear plan and are mov­ing quickly to return Starbucks to growth.”

Oleato was the brain­child of for­mer chief exec­u­tive Howard Schultz, who said the inspi­ra­tion for the drink came after an extended trip to Sicily, where he was intro­duced to the cus­tom of drink­ing a table­spoon of extra vir­gin olive oil before his morn­ing cof­fee. Later, he started mix­ing the olive oil directly into the cof­fee.

The cof­fee line included five hot and cold brewed bev­er­ages made with a table­spoon of Nocellara del Belice extra vir­gin olive oil sourced from an award-win­ning pro­ducer in Partanna.

The bev­er­age line debuted in Italy in February 2023 and has since spread to stores in Canada, China, France, Japan and the United Kingdom. Starbucks has not pub­licly said whether it will dis­con­tinue Oleato from its inter­na­tional stores, where sales declined in 2024.

During its year-and-a-half run, the Oleato line of bev­er­ages was met with enthu­si­asm and skep­ti­cism.

From the out­set, some experts hoped Starbucks could become a global olive oil ambas­sador by intro­duc­ing extra vir­gin olive oil to the next gen­er­a­tion of con­sumers and pro­vid­ing a new plat­form for olive oil pro­duc­ers.

Some U.S.-based Starbucks loca­tions even sold bot­tles of Oleificio Asaro dal 1916​’s Partanna Robust blend, used to make the bev­er­ages. However, it is unclear what impact this addi­tional sales chan­nel had on the Sicilian pro­ducer.

Despite a then-bull­ish Schultz claim­ing Oleato would ​“trans­form the cof­fee indus­try” and his suc­ces­sor, Laxman Narasimhan, describ­ing the bev­er­age launch as ​“highly suc­cess­ful” and ​“one of the top five prod­uct launches in the last five years,” cus­tomers and crit­ics were giv­ing the bev­er­age mixed reviews.

While some cus­tomers enjoyed the ​“super rich, creamy, and nutty fla­vor,” oth­ers reported cramp­ing and expe­ri­enc­ing a lax­a­tive effect after drink­ing the olive oil cof­fee bev­er­age. Dieticians attrib­uted this to the com­bi­na­tion of high lev­els of fat and caf­feine.

Baristas and man­agers at sev­eral stores also con­firmed to Bloomberg News that the item was not very pop­u­lar.

• Starbucks
• Bloomberg News