Costa Coffee has appointed Jez Langhorn as Chief People Officer, strengthening its global leadership team as the coffee chain continues to focus on culture, capability and organisational performance across international markets.
Langhorn began the role on 30 June and will lead Costa Coffee’s Global People team. His remit includes shaping the company’s people strategy, strengthening its culture, enhancing leadership capability and supporting organisational performance as the business continues its international growth journey.
The appointment brings to Costa Coffee a senior HR leader with more than two decades of global people leadership experience across foodservice, retail, hospitality and convenience-led consumer businesses. Langhorn joins after serving as Senior Vice President, HR North America at Starbucks, where he led people strategy for one of the coffee company’s largest markets.
Prior to Starbucks, Langhorn served as Chief Human Resources Officer at Global Partners LP. Earlier in his career, he spent more than 17 years with McDonald’s, holding several senior leadership positions, including Corporate Vice President, Centre HR and Senior Vice President, Chief People Officer, UK and Northern Europe.
That career path gives Langhorn direct exposure to large-scale, people-intensive operating environments where customer experience depends heavily on frontline teams, store leadership, training systems, retention and culture. For Costa Coffee, those capabilities are particularly relevant as it operates across multiple channels, markets and formats.
The appointment is also notable because Costa Coffee sits at the intersection of hospitality, retail and consumer packaged beverages. Unlike a traditional hotel group or restaurant operator, Costa’s people strategy must support a business that includes owned and franchised cafés, partner-operated stores, self-serve formats and wider brand extensions. That creates a broader people challenge than simply managing café staffing.
For a brand built around daily customer interaction, the Chief People Officer role carries direct commercial significance. Service consistency, store culture, manager capability and employee engagement all affect the guest experience. In coffee retail, where frequency, familiarity and speed are central to customer loyalty, people strategy is closely connected to brand performance.
Langhorn’s McDonald’s background is especially relevant in this context. Large foodservice businesses depend on structured leadership development, strong operational routines, scalable training and clear progression pathways for frontline and management teams. His subsequent roles at Global Partners LP and Starbucks added further experience in people strategy across complex, distributed workforces.
Costa Coffee’s parent company, The Coca-Cola Company, completed its acquisition of Costa in 2019, describing the transaction at the time as the addition of a global coffee platform with potential for future growth and expansion. Since then, Costa has remained an important part of Coca-Cola’s wider coffee ambitions, although the café and retail coffee market has faced significant pressure from inflation, changing work patterns, competition and evolving consumer expectations.
Against that backdrop, people leadership becomes more than an internal function. Coffee chains are competing not only for customers, but also for store managers, baristas, franchise talent, regional operators and corporate leaders who can deliver consistent standards while adapting to local market realities. A strong people function can influence retention, productivity, leadership depth and the ability to execute change across markets.
Langhorn’s appointment follows a wider strengthening of Costa Coffee’s senior leadership team. The company has also announced the appointment of Matthew Sisk as Chief Financial Officer, with Sisk set to join in September. Together, the moves point to a leadership focus on operational performance, culture, capability and long-term value creation.
For Langhorn, the role brings him back into a global coffee environment, but with a broader enterprise remit. At Starbucks, his role was centred on HR leadership across North America. At Costa, he will lead the global people agenda for a brand operating across international markets and supported by Coca-Cola’s wider system.
The people agenda he inherits is likely to include several priorities familiar to large hospitality and retail operators: attracting and retaining frontline talent, building leadership capability, improving employee experience, supporting franchise and partner alignment, and ensuring that culture remains consistent as the business evolves across markets and formats.
His appointment also reflects a broader trend across hospitality and foodservice, where Chief People Officers are increasingly expected to act as strategic business leaders. Workforce stability, leadership quality and culture are now central to operational performance, particularly in businesses where brand experience is delivered through thousands of daily human interactions.
For Costa Coffee, Langhorn’s arrival gives the company a people leader with experience across three major operating environments: global quick-service restaurants, convenience and energy retail, and international coffee. That combination positions him to support a business where culture, operational discipline and customer experience must work together.
As Costa continues to develop its next phase, Langhorn’s role will be to ensure that the company’s people strategy supports both day-to-day performance and longer-term growth. In a coffee business, the brand may sit on the cup, but the experience is still delivered by people.
