Starbucks, struggling with fading sales and disgruntled investors, said Tuesday that it’s replacing CEO Laxman Narasimhan with Brian Niccol, chairman and CEO of Chipotle.

Narasimhan, who spent a little more than a year leading Starbucks, will step down immediately, the Seattle coffee giant said. Niccol will become Starbucks’ chairman and CEO on Sept. 9. Chief Financial Officer Rachel Ruggeri will serve as interim CEO until that time.

Narasimhan, a longtime PepsiCo executive who has also served as the CEO of Reckitt, a U.K. consumer health company, became Starbucks’ CEO in March 2023. He succeeded company founder Howard Schultz, the longtime Starbucks leader and chairman emeritus who came out of retirement in 2022 to serve as interim CEO.

But investors and the company board quickly soured on Narasimhan as sales weakened and Starbucks dealt with multiple issues, including inroads by lower-cost competitors in China and boycotts in the Middle East and elsewhere related to the Israel-Hamas war.

Starbucks’ revenue dropped 2% in the first three months of this year, the first quarterly sales decline for the company since the end of 2020. The decline prompted a rebuke from Schultz, who wrote in a LinkedIn post this spring that company leaders should spend more time in stores and focus on coffee drinks to turn around sales.

Revenue fell again the next quarter. A new summer drink with boba-like raspberry “pearls” drove strong U.S. sales, but the company had to pull back on marketing after it ran out of ingredients, Narasimhan said in a recent conference call with investors.

Elliott Investment Management, an activist firm with a stake in Starbucks, said it began talking about a change in leadership with Starbucks’ board two months ago. The firm called Niccol’s appointment a “transformational step forward.”

Chipotle said Scott Boatwright, the company’s chief operating officer, will become its interim CEO.