Starbucks Taiwan names new chairperson as it rethinks café strategy

Starbucks Taiwan has put a new chairperson in place while signaling a sharper reset of how its cafés are used. Kao Hsiu-ling, who heads Uni-President Group’s beauty and wellness business, is now chairperson as the chain moves to end buy-one-get-one deals and remove power outlets, a clear push to keep customers moving instead of settling in for long stays.

For baristas and shift supervisors, that change points to a different kind of floor work. Fewer lingering customers could ease table turnover and free up seats, but it could also shift the job toward managing friction from people who expect laptop-friendly space and promotions. In a market with more than 5,000 coffee shops in Taiwan, Starbucks is not just trying to sell coffee. It is trying to decide what kind of café it wants to be as it competes with Louisa Coffee, which has about 560 stores, and 85°C, which runs nearly 400 shops nationwide.

The move comes as Starbucks Taiwan reached 600 stores on May 24, 2026, with the 600th branch opening in Taipei’s Nangang District, opposite Nangang Station, in a mega-combination store that also marked Cosmed’s 600th outlet and included 7-Eleven under the Uni-President umbrella. Uni-President chairman Lo Chih-hsien said the company is already preparing for “the next 600 outlets,” underscoring how aggressively the group wants to keep expanding even as it tightens the café experience.

Lo also said Starbucks’ earnings have not actually declined, arguing that reported swings mainly reflect higher royalty payments adjusted for inflation. That matters for workers because the company is framing the strategy as a business reset, not a retreat. At store level, though, the work changes less around earnings talk than around throughput: fewer long stays, less outlet-hunting, and more pressure to keep traffic flowing.

Kao has linked the broader Uni-President strategy to next-generation beauty and lifestyle trends, and she has said Cosmed’s growth is being driven in part by Taiwan’s rapidly aging population. Starbucks Taiwan has continued to run limited-time store and product campaigns in 2026 even as it rethinks the role of its cafés, suggesting the chain wants more sales velocity and less seat occupancy. For workers, that is the real test of the reset: whether it reduces operational strain, or simply replaces one kind of customer behavior with another that baristas still have to manage.