Romaine Bostick

I'm here right now with Brian Nickel, fresh off his investor day here in New York City and fresh off an earnings report that actually seemed to please a lot of investors.

You're five quarters right now into your tenure as CEO of Starbucks, and you put together a couple of quarters of growth, something that the company hadn't seen in quite some time.

So when you say transactions, are you getting more people in the store?

I'm curious about the actual amount of money that they're spending.

As far as the growth in tickets, that was actually a little bit underpacing what you actually saw in transactions themselves.

What explains that?

Since you took over, you've put a big emphasis on, I guess, reimagining the stores to a certain extent.

This may seem like a dumb question, but why?

I mean, when I look at where your revenue comes from, a lot of that is coming from the drive-thru.

It's coming from takeout on the apps.

It's coming from delivery.

But you've put a big emphasis on the in-store experience, and I don't understand why.

And you think that's what customers want, because we've seen some new entrants into the coffee space, both domestically as well as some folks like Luckin coming to the U.S., taking a much different business model, basically grab and go, more or less.

I mean, that sounds great on paper, but that sounds also complex.

I mean, how do you maintain the integrity of everything when you're trying to have this experience in store at the same time somebody wants to grab and go or a delivery driver showing up to grab an order as well?

That vibe, as I think one of your executives said yesterday at your investor day is back.

The cultural relevancy for Starbucks, that's back.

Well, speaking of her, your investor day yesterday, she talked a lot about your rewards program.

It's relaunching, being reimagined, I believe, in early March.

Talk about the need to retain your existing customer base, but how that rewards program helps, if at all, in bringing in new customers, those who aren't exposed to Starbucks on a daily basis.