Specialty Coffee Retailer is a publication for owners, managers and employees of retail outlets that sell specialty coffee. Its scope includes best sales practices, supplies, business trends and anything else to assist the small coffee retailer.
Issue link: https://read.dmtmag.com/i/109835
COFFEE TABLE: LABOR ISSUES Getting, and keeping, a good staff Café owners talk about how things like car repair and impromptu Fred Flintstone outfits can make a shop a great place to work. S pecialty Coffee Retailer recruited four coffeehouse owners from across the country to contribute to our first-ever Coffee Table, a telephonic "roundtable" discussion of issues in coffee retailing. The subject for the first Coffee Talk is labor issues— hiring, training and retaining a good staff. Here are the players: JACK GROOT (moderator): Jack, a longtime columnist for Specialty Coffee Retailer, is owner of JP's Coffee in Holland, Mich. and a barista school operator and consultant. JANICE TOWNSEND: Owner of Roots Coffeehouse in North Richland Hills, Texas. EMERAN LANGMAID: Owner of A&E Coffee Roastery in Amherst, N.H. JERRY KALAL: Owner of K. Dees Coffee and Roasting Co. in Lafayette, Ind. LANCE RATZE: Owner of Yola's Café in Madison, Wis. This is an edited transcript. GROOT: Janice, why don't you go first, please. TOWNSEND: I would say probably the major concerns with hiring is going to be finding trustworthy people, obviously hard workers, people that you can leave the store to when you're not there and feel good about it. As far as retention, sometimes it's difficult when you're paying a lower wage, and you can't always pay as much as you'd like to pay people to retain your staff. So that's definitely a concern, how do we retain a staff when we're not paying as much as a full-time job would. And managing, I would say finding a good person to support you in your management is important. That's something that's definitely a concern as well, finding someone that can come alongside of you and is trustworthy. 16 LANGMAID: On hiring, I think the biggest component would be that your staff represents the brand. They are your representative to the customers, and ultimately that is the goal, that the staff represents your brand, your café, well. In order to do that, they have to be courteous. In terms of drink preparation it has to be consistent across the staff, so every time the customer comes in they get their drink made the exact same way, whether it's on a Friday afternoon or a Saturday morning. I think the worst thing is to have a customer that's mistreated. Certainly with the social media today, that one incident, whether it's on Yelp or any of the other review boards, can go such a long way in tarnishing all of the effort you put in. RATZE: When it comes to hiring, my wife and I run our café, and our biggest concern is always getting the right person on the team. And when it comes to hiring, we try to follow what we call the Three C's. It's not ours—we got it from a leadership book called "Axiom: Powerful Leadership Proverbs" by Bill Hybels. He talks about, when he hires, and we follow the same thing, we look at people's character. We want people that are team players. Are they honest? Do they submit and respect their previous leadership? Do they have a good work ethic? And then the second "C" is competency. We try to figure out in advance what competencies are required for the position we're hiring for, and then in the interview process, we're looking for the person that's going to meet the criteria we've set forth. And then lastly, "chemistry." Are they going to be a good fit? We're in Madison [Wis.], and Madison's a university town, and on the east side, people really value buying local, buying organic. On the west side of Madison, there's that value but it's not lived out as much. And so sometimes, we get people who come from the east side, come from the university, and they want to work on the west side, and they're like, "These things are important to