The Starbucks Coffee Company
Leadership Experience 2025
CONTEXT
Starbucks and Touch have been creating transformational, culture shifting, and unforgettable experiences together for over 30 years. Touch was thrilled to help the Starbucks Coffee Company deliver their 2025 Leadership Experience (LE25) in Las Vegas, Nevada, across four amazing days in June. The company’s Back to Starbucks strategy depends on the passion and skill of every Starbucks coffeehouse leader, so bringing together partners from across US and Canada for a powerful, collective experience, to ignite their shared passion for coffee, customers, and community, was both the grounding vision and ultimate outcome.
THE EXPERIENCE
The event hosted over 14,500 Coffeehouse Leaders (Store Managers), District Managers, and Regional Directors from across North America for a spectacular four days that included keynote presentations from company executives and guest speakers, including CEO, Brian Niccol, the inspirational Will Guidera, outgoing board member, Mellody Hobson, and former chairman and CEO, Howard Schultz. The event also included celebrations and musical performances from The War & Treaty, Ella Langley, Janelle Monáe, Bruno Mars, and the irresistible DJ Tina T. Partners also had a front row seat to the semi-finals and finals of the first ever Starbucks Global Barista Championships.
The experience also included workshops, networking opportunities, a community showcase, and a signature 300,000 square foot custom coffee pavilion all designed to deepen partners love of coffee and their understanding of five dimensions of the carefully curated journey Starbucks coffee takes from the origin countries where it is sourced, through the meticulous processing, blending, and roasting processes, arriving at the in-store experience where their coffee lands in the cups of millions of happy customers all over the world, every day.
Touch worked with an incredibly engaged, thoughtful, and supportive group of Starbucks partners and a team of over 500 specialists at partner event logistics, AVL, transportation, catering and many other companies to produce a flawless event. Working from the ground up on event strategy, messaging, and content development, through all phases of planning, design, event pre-production, video production, speaker coaching, and onsite production across three venues (The Mandalay Bay Convention Center, Thomas & Mack Arena, and Allegiant Stadium) LE25 marks the most recent signature moment of unrivaled partnership helping to set the stage for the future success of the global coffee icon.
ROLE / Strategy, Content Development, Experiential, Design, Video & Motion Graphics, Live Event Production
Starbucks LE25 Highlights
Event Strategy
Every great event begins with a great strategy. Touch worked closely with Starbucks to identify opportunities to bring Back to Starbucks to life for coffeehouse leaders and to help them see the critical role they play with their teams, in their stores, with every partner, every customer, every cup of coffee, every day. With a mission that includes “…to be the premier purveyor of the finest coffee in the world…” coffee is at the core of Starbucks. So, with insights from the coffee team, we created a variety of “coffee moments” across the experience to help partners see their place in the journey of coffee, from bean to cup. From farmer stories to coffee tastings, beverage innovations to pop up coffee displays, the experience was anchored by a deeply immersive and expansive pavilion experience. Coffee was celebrated and honored everywhere you looked. The primary areas of the experience are highlighted in the sections below.
WELCOME Experience
The welcome and registration experience for LE25 was a sight to be seen. 14,500 partners converging on the registration hall at Mandalay Bay Convention Center, consistently met by cheering leaders, an army of gregarious volunteer Starbucks partners guiding them from place to place, along with beautifully designed, perfectly scheduled, dynamic digital signage that seemed to capture and express the spirit of the event, and the energy of Starbucks itself.
GLOBAL BARISTA CHAMPIONSHIP (SEMI-FINALS)
With coffee and craft at the core of Starbucks, it only makes sense that the company would host a global competition to recognize the top barista—and this first ever global competition was a highlight—for those in attendance and for those participating via the live broadcast around the world. Baristas from all over the world competed in regional qualifying rounds to make it to the Global Barista Championship Semi-finals. The semi-finals ran for the first two days of the event on stage at the Mandalay Bay Convention Center, and broadcast live to a global audience of passionate coffee lovers over YouTube. Four finalists were selected out of a field of 16 baristas out of 84,000 competitors from all over the world to compete in the finals which were held the next day on the General Session main stage at Thomas & Mack Arena.
GLOBAL BARISTA CHAMPIONSHIP (FINALS)
Every partner at LE25 had a front row seat to the Global Barista Championship finals as the competition kicked off the opening General Session. Four lucky finalists competed for the top spot, and the winner, Nobuki Shimoide of Japan, was awarded a first-class trip from Delta Airlines to tour Starbucks Reserve Roasteries in Seattle, Chicago, New York City, Shanghai, Tokyo, and Milan.
General Sessions
It has been a decades long tradition at Starbucks for Partners to begin every meeting with a coffee tasting. And the General Session at LE25 was no exception. Distributing coffee for 14,500 partners, after brewing and pouring, took under six minutes thanks to the dedication of the Starbucks leaders who lined up to distribute to their peers. The tasting was led by Michelle Burns, EVP – Global Coffee, who was followed by inspiring presentations from CEO, Brian Niccol, and the senior executive team. Partners were also honored to hear from outgoing board member and entrepreneur, Mellody Hobson, before a Welcome Celebration featuring food and drink and musical guests, including Janelle Monáe. The next morning, the second general session featured former owner and manager of Eleven Madison Park and author of Unreasonable Hospitality, Will Guidera, and a surprise appearance and fireside chat with Brian and Starbucks founder and former CEO, Howard Schultz.
ALL ABOUT OUR COFFEE
A central element of the LE25 experience was an immersive, 500,000 square foot pavilion designed around the Starbucks coffee journey. Partners entered the All About Our Coffee Experience through a gateway reflecting the Starbucks mission where they encountered a sensory wheel with spokes pointing out to five areas of the experience, each with a detailed lifecycle focus, beginning with Starbucks origin countries in Africa, South America, and Asia, and including deep dive conversations and live presentations on two stages from farmers and agronomists from those regions about farming today, and farming in the future. The journey continued through immersive content and displays about processing, blending and roasting – including live roasting demonstrations on a third stage, and ending with a coffee bar and conversations about how to create a culture of coffee in Starbucks stores themselves. The pavilion celebrated all the hands that touch the coffee as it makes its way to a Starbucks store, ready to be crafted into a beautiful beverage, delighting customers and partners alike.
Activations
Keeping 14,500 partners engaged, refreshed, hydrated, and informed about all the incredible programs that Starbucks is involved in is no small feat. For LE25, we dedicated the second floor of the Mandalay Bay Convention Center to a dizzying array of activations of all kinds and sizes reflecting the company’s diverse programs and addressing the needs of attendees. Activations included coffee pop-ups, a coloring wall, an audio chill out lounge, a Community Champions red carpet, displays and exhibits focused on sustainability, community, and diversity, the Starbucks College Achievement Program with ASU, the Starbucks Food Share program, Tryer Center, Starbucks Stories, and a refreshment booth sponsored by Ollie Pop. We intentionally created plenty of selfie moments to help partners easily capture their LE experience and share it back with their stores, share learnings and memorable moments with their partners and extend the value (and the fun) of the experience.
Development SessionS
The program for LE25 included a range of sessions designed to provide learning opportunities for partners. We transformed the Global Barista Championships Semi-finals stage into a breakout session space for Green Apron Service, sessions that introduced partners to a simplified standard focused on leading with empathy and agility to make every customer moment right. The Leading a Coffeehouse session provided partners with hands-on exercises and intimate conversations at tables with peers about the challenges and nuances of running a coffeehouse, all focused on delivering on the Back to Starbucks promise. And finally, District Managers, and Regional Directors participated in a session with COO Mike Grams and other senior leaders focused on supporting and coaching coffeehouse leaders, building on key LE25 themes, ready to return back to their districts to accelerate Back to Starbucks. An Ethiopian coffee ceremony and tasting and a leadership Q&A put a beautiful cap on a full week of learning and inspiration.
CELEBRATIONS
While all of LE25 could easily be described as one massive celebration of the culture and joy that Starbucks coffee brings to the world every day, there were dedicated moments for partners to cut loose and enjoy themselves. Following the opening general session, partners were treated to a surprise performance by The War & Treaty, Ella Langley, and Jannelle Monáe. And at the end of the second day, following breakout sessions and immersion in All About Our Coffee, partners headed off to Allegiant Stadium for a concert with 16-time Grammy Award winner, Bruno Mars.
