DUTCH BROS UNIT COUNT The drive-thru beverage chain has become one of the fastest growing restaurant chains in the U.S., adding more than 100 locations a year since 2020.
Barone is also a natural leader. She was not just the oldest of three children. She was often the oldest of a dozen, as the home was typically full of children thanks to her moth- er’s daycare. Barone organized activities, figured out lunch and helped mom with the general bed- lam that comes along with a child-loaded home. “There was always some level of chaos that I had to rein in,” Barone said. That leadership translated to school, where she would ultimately become the cap- tain of the math team. She also joined the swim team. A straight-A student, she went to Harvard as a math major, where she joined the water polo team and became its co-cap- tain. Barone took a job out of college as a sen- ior analyst at Raymond James in Tampa to be closer to her mother, who was diagnosed with cancer at the time. Having decided on a business career she went back to Harvard Business School for her MBA. That is where she met Luca Barone, who had grown up in Italy and hadn’t been in the U.S. for long. They met at a party that Luca had thrown for a classmate at his house. Christine showed up with a friend. “She showed with that beautiful smile and those bright eyes and it was love at first sight,” he said. Much of Christine Barone’s career has been spent around big personalities. She’d spent more than a decade with Bain & Com- pany before going onto a series of restaurant chain positions that would see her work alongside Howard Schultz, Sam Fox and Op- rah Winfrey. Barone’s first introduction to the restau - rant industry came with Starbucks, work- ing in strategy and helping with a corporate transformation. She was quickly shifted to marketing where she was tasked with help- ing the company figure out food. That was not easy. Starbucks viewed food as a way to build more beverage occasions and generate additional sales. It had long been a major corporate initiative, one that prompt- ed the company to make a number of acquisi - tions, notably of La Boulange Bakery in 2012. Barone worked with La Boulange found- er Pascal Rigo. “A wonderful gentleman,” she said. “I got to learn. It was pretty neat, because I was both part of a large company and with the acquisition, part of a smaller company, trying to integrate the two together and real- ly think through how we could redesign the food platform.” It was also a big learning period. She learned how to scale a new product offering without cutting quality, including how to pro - duce the items and set pricing that fit custom - er expectations and develop a supply chain. It ultimately worked. Food is now a $6
billion business at Starbucks. “We learned how to make a really great croissant,” Barone said. She also gained experience working with a big personality. The food program was a big deal and thus the effort was under a microscope. Which meant that Howard Schultz was asking about it all the time. Barone would get more such experience at her next stop, at True Food Kitchen, the health-fo- cused casual-dining chain where she became CEO in 2016. The concept was owned by Fox Res- taurant Concepts, owned by renowned restaurateur Sam Fox, based on the anti-inflammatory diet principles of Dr. Andrew Weil. Oprah would invest in the brand two years later. Dealing with founders like that is “not easy,” Bailey said. But Barone has a unique ability to bridge between a founder and their vision. “She just leans in every time,” Bailey said. And it would set her up for a stop leading one of the industry’s hottest growth chains.
THE DUTCH BROS “WALK-THRU” LOCATION IN LOS ANGELES. | PHOTO BY JONATHAN MAZE
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RESTAURANT BUSINESS APRIL 2026
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