Cliff Burrows joined the sweetgreen board of directors in June 2020. Cliff spent 19 years at Starbucks until his retirement in January 2020. He rejoined Starbucks as an executive advisor in April 2022.
From October 2016, Cliff served as Starbucks Group President for Siren Retail. In this role, he was responsible for opening and operating Starbucks Roastery, Reserve and Princi *(2) operations across the globe. He took a sabbatical from April to December 2019.
From 2011 to September 2016, Cliff served as Starbucks Group President for the US & Americas, (for year ending September 2016 the Americas segment operated 15,600 stores with a team of 170,000 partners/employees, delivering $14.8B in revenues and $3.7B in operating income). His prior role was Group President, U.S. between March 2008 and September 2011.
Cliff was instrumental in implementing the transformation for the Starbucks U.S. operation following Howard Schultz’s return as CEO in 2008 and, under Cliff’s leadership, the US business set records across every key performance metric. During his time at Starbucks Cliff was executive sponsor, sequentially, for the Access Alliance, the Black Partner Network and the Hispanic Network and he sat on the Starbucks Foundation board for a decade.
Cliff joined Starbucks in 2001 as Managing Director of the UK; in April 2006, he was named President of Starbucks’ EMEA segment and grew the region to more than 1,350 stores across 24 countries.
Prior to joining Starbucks, Cliff was Managing Director for Habitat Designs Limited, the home furnishings company, where he was responsible for the company’s UK business and European franchises; he began his career with Littlewoods Plc as a management trainee.
Cliff was born in Wales, spent his formative years in Zambia and completed his education in the UK. He has lived with his wife and two daughters in Seattle, WA since March 2008. He has dual US/UK citizenship.