Yves Mizrahi

President and Founder

As president of the consulting firm Mizrahi Real Estate Strategies, Yves brings years of expertise in real estate and strategic business consulting to retail brands at all stages of their evolution. His career took off when he was hired by Starbucks Chairman and CEO Howard Schultz in 1989 to serve as the VP of Store Development for the then-emerging brand. During his 10 years with the company, Mizrahi helped build Starbucks from a local business with 19 stores to a national chain with over 1,500 locations. His areas of responsibility included real estate strategy development, leasing, store budgets, sales forecasting, site selection, construction, property/asset management and a dotted line to design and legal. While with Starbucks, Mizrahi traveled the country extensively and became familiar with markets and brokers from L.A. to New York.

After leaving Starbucks, Mizrahi went on to lead the real estate and strategic business consulting practices nationwide for CB Richard Ellis, and was soon hired away by the architectural firm Callison to start a similar service for their company. Through his experience with Callison, he was able to leverage his expertise in all areas of business evaluation, retail real estate strategy, retail store portfolio evaluation, expansion planning and execution roll-out to advance the growth and sales of companies like Gap, REI, lululemon athletica, Costco, Office Max, Cabela’s, Nike and others.

In 2012, Mizrahi was inspired to start his own firm, Mizrahi Real Estate Strategies. At the core of his business is a strong commitment to developing comprehensive real estate strategies to assure the success of retail brands at all stages of their evolution. He continues to offer expertise in business planning, site selection and lease negotiations for a wide variety of store concepts—from emerging brands to larger Fortune 100 companies. He recently gained critical international experience in both China and Europe by working with teams of senior executives from Microsoft and Samsung, along with Mckinsey, in developing their respective real estate market efforts in those global markets.

Mizrahi has also served as interim head of store development for many notable retailers including lululemon athletica, Nike—Women’s Concept, Sur La Table, Planet Fitness—Western Region, Prana, My Fit Foods, REI and Filson. Additionally, he has served on the boards of directors for Papyrus, Pallino Pastaria and InSpa, and on the boards of advisors for Exhale Spa and Avenace. In his free time, Mizrahi enjoys travel, tennis and the outdoors.