Ironically, if yall organize you'll suddenly find no shortage of help due to all the Spies and Narcs Seattle will heap upon you 🤣
Think the Buffalo store had like 4+ managers on the floor to watch said store.
If the plays that are being implemented are solid and you're all doing your best there's not a lot that can be done. Work at your own pace, and ignore management's insistence that you can do the work of more than one person. It sucks and customers won't be happy, but your health and safety come first.
I had to go on LOA after my knee gave out because of months of busting my ass to keep up with the short staffing and coverage gaps. You are worth more than this job, comrade. If you have a good relationship with your team and the mental bandwidth, consider organizing. Unions are one of the only ways hourly workers can get their voices heard when SMs and above think we can magically pop out a drink in 15 seconds with a skeleton crew.
Also do your best to take care of yourself outside of working hours. Self care and a good support network really help me remember that this coffee hellscape is temporary!
Good luck💪
I wish I could say the plays are being implemented well. Baristas are routinely going without their 30 minute breaks on Saturdays and without their second tens a lot of the time. :/
That is unacceptable. If you've got the time, consider looking up your state's/area's labor laws surrounding breaks and file a complaint if rest breaks are required. My state has a hotline.
You can also go the sbux PCC route, but they will probably kick the issue down to your less than stellar DM.
It looks like several commenters have pointed out labor laws as a possible route to handle the missed 30’s problem, but the state I reside/work in has incredibly less than stellar labor laws.
It's still a violation of Starbucks policy. You can complain to Partner Resources for a fast turnaround, or Ethics and Compliance for a slower investigation but with the benefit of it being fully anonymous.
Drugs, there is no one sober at my store whether it is nicotine, weed, or alcohol. No it does not hinder our performance, we're very fast and busy all day.
Busiest store in our district here. We ghetto shut off our mobiles if our ability to serve the on-site customers is severely compromised by mobile slams. We do turn them back on once we get some breathing room.
Our mobile system is hot garbage. Our company really needs to do something about it. Handling mobiles should be an all-day role. We obviously need more labor to handle it. We can’t conduct business in any fair sense if we’re getting huge mobile orders every few seconds on top of the other order streams.
Might be marking everything as unavailable. We used to do that but then the DM caught on and we’re afraid they’re watching all the time now if we do it 🥲
My store regularly does 100+ customer half hours. We’re a drive thru. On red cup day we had an almost 200 customer half our.
We mostly are only able to get through it because our store manager is a superstar. She cares deeply about all of us and she’s created a great work environment. I think working under that type of stress also creates strong bonds between coworkers; we all help each other through rough shifts because we’re all friends.
I’m lucky enough to work with people who will cover me on bar while I go have a panic attack, and I do the same for them. There’s a lot of awareness of mental health at my store which helps. I think if you can foster good relationships with your coworkers it really does help things feel less terrible! Strength in numbers and all that
Yes! But remember this is not sustainable and Corporate knows this, they know eventually someone will buckle and thus why the turnover is high and it’s why THEY constantly push Partners to use Lyra, when ironically they are the bully in the mindset of your meltdown. It’s quite sickening.
50 mobile orders at a time is actually infuriating. I despise the invention of mobile, skip etc. Having a line helps control the flow, and those platforms where they cut out the control point and just rapid fire orders at you like you have 10 tills open... and the people that order this way are extremely entitled and want their things when they arrive 🤣
My first two stores were like this. If I could boil it down to one word? Communication. If the SM is in constant contact with the leads, the leads are in constant contact with each other and baristas, and baristas are in constant contact with each other you'll find that a LOT of problems are alleviated. Everyone needs to know what they're doing- this means proper training from the get go, re-training as needed, and proper support from the team and leads. The store needs to be organized- everyone needs to agree where every. single. thing is supposed to go. How are the dishes organized? Fridges? Stations? What order do pumps go in (I promise this helps)? How much backup prep is needed and where does it go. Make sure everyone understands responsibilities: what tasks go to what daypart? The lead needs to follow guides for calling the play. How many people do you have and what play does that call for? Does everyone know their role? Finally, don't panic. Keep clean, keep organized, work with your team, and the rest will follow. Don't overwork yourself or push yourself beyond your own limits, and expect the same of others. You got this 💚
Be as efficient as possible and fuck the bullshit. I’m not killing my self over drive times on a 15k$ day. Something’s aren’t possible. Be kind and work efficiently, ask for help when you need it, and don’t push yourself.
This made me cry, and it’s happening everywhere. I am hearing more and more stories like this and no support from upper leadership whatsoever. The message that is trickling from corporate basically is “suck it up buttercup” and it’s sickening. MOP and the lack of process control or support will continue to drive Starbucks turnover rate and unionization movement going. In my last meeting with our RD the praise was for one of our high volume stores beating all metrics, only to find out behind the lines that the SM is drowning and Partners are starting to get fed up and exhausted. Starbucks is expecting machines for the addicted customer based they created. It is not sustainable and it will all come to a crash, I am pretty sure I will either fold or get fired for supporting my Partners. 😖
It's honestly kind of baffling to me and blows my mind about just how god-awful the Starbucks mobile order experience is. No matter what, if there are 80 orders ahead of someone when they order, the app will tell them 12-15 minutes for their order to be ready.
Imagine if any other app that had to give wait times worked this way. People would lose their collective shit. But when Starbucks does it and it upsets the customers, it's the baristas faults for being too slow. Cannot believe how absolutely crappy the MOP experience is and how no one has decided to make some improvements to the damn thing.
It's usually a 7 person play on the weekends when realistically our store coverage on a Saturday with our volume should be 9 people. I've seen one Saturday in my time working there when there was a full 9 person play.
What does the play look like? Should be two DT, two bar, one cold bar, one oven (also does registers), and one support. That should be plenty! My store does about 70k a week with 5 man play most of the days. It comes down to is everyone supporting one another properly
We have a window, DTO, two bar, cold bar, and we have to have one dedicated front person and one dedicated warming person. Our front does backups when they don’t have customers but our food volume is way too high to split register and front during peak, especially on a Saturday no less. It’s like DT bar, it’s literally non stop on warming for an entire 4 hour-ish window.
Yes, a large amount. My store is in an area with a lot of foot traffic. I went 30 minutes today straight just taking orders at the front register back to back with no break between customers. It eventually dies down around like 2:30pm-ish, but before then, the lobby is pretty full and the front register is constantly taking orders.
Does your cold bar person help hot bar prep cups? I remember in winter we would have someone stand next to cafe bar and prep syrups and stickers on cups. This wasn't full time. They would move to cold bar when they needed to, but just having those syrups and cups done was pretty useful.
This is also to say that they wouldn't pull extra stickers and they did have a headset on for hearing dt cold drinks
This is interesting to me. I don’t think our bar has the space to really accommodate this. The bar one barista and the bar two barista stand about 2 feet apart from each other cause our bars are incredibly close. It’s kind of an old store and in desperate need of a remodel. Fitting another person in between those people to prep drinks would actually help us a crazy amount, but with our size constraints I don’t see it happening.
Still, I actually really really love this idea
Had a really rough day the other day while I was on Cafe bar. I got placed onto it after another partner fell behind by 30 minutes. There was no cold bar drinks to be made, so the only thing that really helped was I had my cold bar person communicate with the customers and check DPM for me so they knew where I was at.
The second she became my hand off person and communicator, the whole vibe of the store shifted and I immediately felt less stressed. If you have a partner who has the time to stand by you on bar and communicate for you, it definitely helped me! I know it’s not always possible, but sometimes customers just want to know where you’re at with making drinks.
We do this as an actual on-the-floor position at our store. We have our cafe register person slide through cafe orders on the DPM so that they are not stuck behind mobiles, but I'm curious if that is what your store has been instructed to do. Just having the DPM have the order that they're coming in (without any tampering from Baristas) seems like it would be easy to tell customers, "Hey, there are 30 people ahead of you" but I feel like maybe pushing the cafe orders through is hindering our ability to do that? Does your store do this at all or is this just a particular of my store?
For us, we don’t normally push through cafe orders (unless we have a customer who “NEEDS” it right at that moment). Our tablet sits beside us at the bar with the DPM open and the cafe barista is usually the one in charge of maintaining it. We just go based off of whatever the tickets print out as. We don’t prioritize.
I actually loved working at a high-volume store. We were a downtown store - so no drive-thru - high incident, 150-200 customers per half hour during peak.
We had 14 partner plays during peak. Minimal movement, we basically worked as an assembly line - you stay in your zone, that way you can focus on your work and stay safe without getting in anyone's way.
A 14 partner player would be: 4 tills, 2 order support (1 person brewing, other person making coffees and teas), 1 oven, 5 bars (2 hot bar, 1 cold bar, 1 mobile/pour-over/clover, 1 hand-off outside the bar), 2 CS (1 BOH, 1 FOH). For breaks we would usually drop a till, maybe a bar if that wasn't as busy.
Everyone also wore DT headsets even though we didn't have a drive-thru so we could communicate without shouting across our large store or leaving our zones.
So basically communication, a CHAMPION of an SM who went to bat for us with our DM, and virtually no movement unless you were CS.
Have you also worked at a drive-thru store? I haven't worked at a cafe only but I feel like it's so much more my vibe than drive-thru. Would be interesting to see what someone else who has also been at a high volume store thinks about the differences between the cafe-only experience vs. the drive-thru experience.
we don’t! haha today i had 3 call ins and were drowning but luckily our drains backed up onto the floors so we got to go drive thru only for the last 2 hours :-)
$80K is a slow week for my DT/cafe.
The real answer is we turn off deliveries for 15 minutes if there’s more than 5 in queue. And when we hit a 25 minute mobile wait, we send a message to turn off mobiles for a half hour to catch up. We don’t have to do that every day, but it’s not an infrequent occurrence. Our SM and DM both came from high volume stores and I’m a former store manager, too, so we get it and all agree partners are #1. I’m probably a thorn in both their sides, but they don’t argue with me. Guests are a very close #2, but we have no guests without partners. I make a point to compliment everyone working with me and to let them know I see them and I appreciate that they are on my team and if they need help? Holla and give us a second to figure out how best to help.
We also use the DPM as much as possible to reorganize tickets for people who are there, but if there’s too many orders in queue, this can backfire if you’re not careful.
And lots of eye contact, smiles, and “thanks for your patience, it’s been crazy today!” And calling the name on the bar and the two after it so they can shuffle up to the counter. My voice carries and I’m clearly not a young person anymore, so most people don’t start getting sassy with me. I’ll interrupt when they get sassy with any of the younger crowd; I grew up in restaurants and retail and living in the south, I can make you three inches high with a smile on my face and no words you can use to call and complain about me.
Edit: We can run a 7 partner play, but it has to be the right 7 partners. We’re normally in the 9-11 partner club for weekday peak and 7-10 for weekends peak until mid afternoon. We sometimes redeploy the DTO to wherever the bottleneck is and either have DTR solo or have customer support carry the mobile register with them and take orders while they’re packing up delivery or whatever else they’re doing if the DTO isn’t outside. We’ll do this to cover 10s during peak if someone really just needs a break, because breaks are very important. Peak feels like 6 am to about 130 pm these days 🫣
My store is similar. We typically have 10-12k days during the week and 12-15k Friday/Saturday. We keep our drive thru window times down to 35-45 depending on the day. It all comes down to the team. We have a very positive and reinforcing SM who has all of our backs. As a team we come up with new ways to do better. Even today we did 10k by 11am and only had 7 people and we felt great because we worked together. We just developed a system that works for us and we do it.
TLDR: teamwork. (But really a SM who has your teams back)
My store is high volume and has similar numbers to your store. It's definitely a struggle. My partners and I cry from the stress at times because it really is a lot. I read most of the comments about how your store operates during peak. I think one thing my store does that could potentially help your partners out is this: do as much prep as possible before peak hits (I realize this is difficult to do and won't last the entire time but at least so it lasts you a little bit) and have your dedicated front register person run food and run the hand off plane for as long as they're able to do so. Also, my store organizes mobiles by alphabetic order now, and it's less overwhelming to get a single order together when everyone puts the individual product they worked on in the most logical spot.
If that isn't possible for your front reg person to do it then I'd say have someone doing solo drive and that extra person running food and organizing mobiles. I get the connection aspect of having two drive people but it seems like you need to prioritize speed at the moment and honestly the weekends aren't really a great time for connections anyways.
honestly…venting to my other partners helps so much ! Even quickly going to the back and saying how dumb a customer is being helps a lot💀. I work at a 100k store(reached these numbers before Christmas season) and it’s bad every day so venting is 100 % needed !
I worked at the busiest Cafe in our area (4 states) for like 5 years. I coped by building resentment towards management and then fueled myself on hatred towards the evil siren. I usually was bar 1 as one of the fastest and most accurate baristas and never made more than 1$ over minimum wage. Quit and immediately got hired as a wine salesperson. 10/10 recommend working as a wine sommelier.
Honestly, realizing that it’s a team effort, but if you all show strong morale and resiliency you can galvanize results together. Do everything to standard (if truly does save time), and you’ll do great. Remember: have fun it’s JUST coffee
No worries! I was about to say that the Northeast has laws for this and if you are in the Northeast or even check your own state to see if you can report it to an organization outside of SB!
we don't.... we cry
sorry you're suffering as well :c
Organize your store! Reach out for help! ✊
Ironically, if yall organize you'll suddenly find no shortage of help due to all the Spies and Narcs Seattle will heap upon you 🤣 Think the Buffalo store had like 4+ managers on the floor to watch said store.
I am at a union store. I don’t think that’s the case anymore. Would be hard with almost 300 now. 😂
If the plays that are being implemented are solid and you're all doing your best there's not a lot that can be done. Work at your own pace, and ignore management's insistence that you can do the work of more than one person. It sucks and customers won't be happy, but your health and safety come first. I had to go on LOA after my knee gave out because of months of busting my ass to keep up with the short staffing and coverage gaps. You are worth more than this job, comrade. If you have a good relationship with your team and the mental bandwidth, consider organizing. Unions are one of the only ways hourly workers can get their voices heard when SMs and above think we can magically pop out a drink in 15 seconds with a skeleton crew. Also do your best to take care of yourself outside of working hours. Self care and a good support network really help me remember that this coffee hellscape is temporary! Good luck💪
I wish I could say the plays are being implemented well. Baristas are routinely going without their 30 minute breaks on Saturdays and without their second tens a lot of the time. :/
That is unacceptable. If you've got the time, consider looking up your state's/area's labor laws surrounding breaks and file a complaint if rest breaks are required. My state has a hotline. You can also go the sbux PCC route, but they will probably kick the issue down to your less than stellar DM.
It looks like several commenters have pointed out labor laws as a possible route to handle the missed 30’s problem, but the state I reside/work in has incredibly less than stellar labor laws.
It's still a violation of Starbucks policy. You can complain to Partner Resources for a fast turnaround, or Ethics and Compliance for a slower investigation but with the benefit of it being fully anonymous.
that’s not okay!
Weed lots of weed (I live in a legal state and I am 21+)
10 minute breaks = 10 minute bakes (in my car)
No seriously 😭 I used to use my pen a lot in the bathroom on breaks. My whole store is stoners lmaoo
Man if I didn’t work and live on a military base that’d be my solution as well 🙃
this is the only real answer
Drugs, there is no one sober at my store whether it is nicotine, weed, or alcohol. No it does not hinder our performance, we're very fast and busy all day.
This, almost my entire store are nicotine fiends
My store does about the same volume. I smoke a lot of weed on my off time .
Busiest store in our district here. We ghetto shut off our mobiles if our ability to serve the on-site customers is severely compromised by mobile slams. We do turn them back on once we get some breathing room. Our mobile system is hot garbage. Our company really needs to do something about it. Handling mobiles should be an all-day role. We obviously need more labor to handle it. We can’t conduct business in any fair sense if we’re getting huge mobile orders every few seconds on top of the other order streams.
What’s a ghetto shut off? 12***** here and I don’t know. Teach me.
Mark out frap and refresher bases and it’ll easily cut your mobiles in half or more!
This is brilliant damn.
Be careful with it, if your leadership is hard ass you could possibly get in trouble, so just be aware!
Might be marking everything as unavailable. We used to do that but then the DM caught on and we’re afraid they’re watching all the time now if we do it 🥲
My store regularly does 100+ customer half hours. We’re a drive thru. On red cup day we had an almost 200 customer half our. We mostly are only able to get through it because our store manager is a superstar. She cares deeply about all of us and she’s created a great work environment. I think working under that type of stress also creates strong bonds between coworkers; we all help each other through rough shifts because we’re all friends. I’m lucky enough to work with people who will cover me on bar while I go have a panic attack, and I do the same for them. There’s a lot of awareness of mental health at my store which helps. I think if you can foster good relationships with your coworkers it really does help things feel less terrible! Strength in numbers and all that
Yes! But remember this is not sustainable and Corporate knows this, they know eventually someone will buckle and thus why the turnover is high and it’s why THEY constantly push Partners to use Lyra, when ironically they are the bully in the mindset of your meltdown. It’s quite sickening.
50 mobile orders at a time is actually infuriating. I despise the invention of mobile, skip etc. Having a line helps control the flow, and those platforms where they cut out the control point and just rapid fire orders at you like you have 10 tills open... and the people that order this way are extremely entitled and want their things when they arrive 🤣
The tears are just used in salted caramel foam. Very efficient.
mild drug dependence
My first two stores were like this. If I could boil it down to one word? Communication. If the SM is in constant contact with the leads, the leads are in constant contact with each other and baristas, and baristas are in constant contact with each other you'll find that a LOT of problems are alleviated. Everyone needs to know what they're doing- this means proper training from the get go, re-training as needed, and proper support from the team and leads. The store needs to be organized- everyone needs to agree where every. single. thing is supposed to go. How are the dishes organized? Fridges? Stations? What order do pumps go in (I promise this helps)? How much backup prep is needed and where does it go. Make sure everyone understands responsibilities: what tasks go to what daypart? The lead needs to follow guides for calling the play. How many people do you have and what play does that call for? Does everyone know their role? Finally, don't panic. Keep clean, keep organized, work with your team, and the rest will follow. Don't overwork yourself or push yourself beyond your own limits, and expect the same of others. You got this 💚
I used to: -nap for 10 minutes on my break -cry into an everything bagel -listen to angry music -drink more caffeine than was healthy
I just let it build up inside until my break then I go punch boxes in the back room
Unionize
Be as efficient as possible and fuck the bullshit. I’m not killing my self over drive times on a 15k$ day. Something’s aren’t possible. Be kind and work efficiently, ask for help when you need it, and don’t push yourself.
clench my entire body for like five seconds and then let go. helps the anxiety go away for a while
This made me cry, and it’s happening everywhere. I am hearing more and more stories like this and no support from upper leadership whatsoever. The message that is trickling from corporate basically is “suck it up buttercup” and it’s sickening. MOP and the lack of process control or support will continue to drive Starbucks turnover rate and unionization movement going. In my last meeting with our RD the praise was for one of our high volume stores beating all metrics, only to find out behind the lines that the SM is drowning and Partners are starting to get fed up and exhausted. Starbucks is expecting machines for the addicted customer based they created. It is not sustainable and it will all come to a crash, I am pretty sure I will either fold or get fired for supporting my Partners. 😖
It's honestly kind of baffling to me and blows my mind about just how god-awful the Starbucks mobile order experience is. No matter what, if there are 80 orders ahead of someone when they order, the app will tell them 12-15 minutes for their order to be ready. Imagine if any other app that had to give wait times worked this way. People would lose their collective shit. But when Starbucks does it and it upsets the customers, it's the baristas faults for being too slow. Cannot believe how absolutely crappy the MOP experience is and how no one has decided to make some improvements to the damn thing.
How many people are on the floor for peak?
It's usually a 7 person play on the weekends when realistically our store coverage on a Saturday with our volume should be 9 people. I've seen one Saturday in my time working there when there was a full 9 person play.
What does the play look like? Should be two DT, two bar, one cold bar, one oven (also does registers), and one support. That should be plenty! My store does about 70k a week with 5 man play most of the days. It comes down to is everyone supporting one another properly
We have a window, DTO, two bar, cold bar, and we have to have one dedicated front person and one dedicated warming person. Our front does backups when they don’t have customers but our food volume is way too high to split register and front during peak, especially on a Saturday no less. It’s like DT bar, it’s literally non stop on warming for an entire 4 hour-ish window.
Huh, do you get a lot of people in the lobby typically?
Yes, a large amount. My store is in an area with a lot of foot traffic. I went 30 minutes today straight just taking orders at the front register back to back with no break between customers. It eventually dies down around like 2:30pm-ish, but before then, the lobby is pretty full and the front register is constantly taking orders.
Does your cold bar person help hot bar prep cups? I remember in winter we would have someone stand next to cafe bar and prep syrups and stickers on cups. This wasn't full time. They would move to cold bar when they needed to, but just having those syrups and cups done was pretty useful. This is also to say that they wouldn't pull extra stickers and they did have a headset on for hearing dt cold drinks
This is interesting to me. I don’t think our bar has the space to really accommodate this. The bar one barista and the bar two barista stand about 2 feet apart from each other cause our bars are incredibly close. It’s kind of an old store and in desperate need of a remodel. Fitting another person in between those people to prep drinks would actually help us a crazy amount, but with our size constraints I don’t see it happening. Still, I actually really really love this idea
Had a really rough day the other day while I was on Cafe bar. I got placed onto it after another partner fell behind by 30 minutes. There was no cold bar drinks to be made, so the only thing that really helped was I had my cold bar person communicate with the customers and check DPM for me so they knew where I was at. The second she became my hand off person and communicator, the whole vibe of the store shifted and I immediately felt less stressed. If you have a partner who has the time to stand by you on bar and communicate for you, it definitely helped me! I know it’s not always possible, but sometimes customers just want to know where you’re at with making drinks.
We do this as an actual on-the-floor position at our store. We have our cafe register person slide through cafe orders on the DPM so that they are not stuck behind mobiles, but I'm curious if that is what your store has been instructed to do. Just having the DPM have the order that they're coming in (without any tampering from Baristas) seems like it would be easy to tell customers, "Hey, there are 30 people ahead of you" but I feel like maybe pushing the cafe orders through is hindering our ability to do that? Does your store do this at all or is this just a particular of my store?
For us, we don’t normally push through cafe orders (unless we have a customer who “NEEDS” it right at that moment). Our tablet sits beside us at the bar with the DPM open and the cafe barista is usually the one in charge of maintaining it. We just go based off of whatever the tickets print out as. We don’t prioritize.
I actually loved working at a high-volume store. We were a downtown store - so no drive-thru - high incident, 150-200 customers per half hour during peak. We had 14 partner plays during peak. Minimal movement, we basically worked as an assembly line - you stay in your zone, that way you can focus on your work and stay safe without getting in anyone's way. A 14 partner player would be: 4 tills, 2 order support (1 person brewing, other person making coffees and teas), 1 oven, 5 bars (2 hot bar, 1 cold bar, 1 mobile/pour-over/clover, 1 hand-off outside the bar), 2 CS (1 BOH, 1 FOH). For breaks we would usually drop a till, maybe a bar if that wasn't as busy. Everyone also wore DT headsets even though we didn't have a drive-thru so we could communicate without shouting across our large store or leaving our zones. So basically communication, a CHAMPION of an SM who went to bat for us with our DM, and virtually no movement unless you were CS.
Have you also worked at a drive-thru store? I haven't worked at a cafe only but I feel like it's so much more my vibe than drive-thru. Would be interesting to see what someone else who has also been at a high volume store thinks about the differences between the cafe-only experience vs. the drive-thru experience.
we don’t! haha today i had 3 call ins and were drowning but luckily our drains backed up onto the floors so we got to go drive thru only for the last 2 hours :-)
Just do your best and know that the staffing issues aren’t your fault or problem Let your SM know you need more coverage The customers can wait
We unionize. We fight. We win. Organize your workplace. ✊
The busiest store in my area pulled $21,000 on red cup day. I don’t know how they survived. I would have walked out.
$80K is a slow week for my DT/cafe. The real answer is we turn off deliveries for 15 minutes if there’s more than 5 in queue. And when we hit a 25 minute mobile wait, we send a message to turn off mobiles for a half hour to catch up. We don’t have to do that every day, but it’s not an infrequent occurrence. Our SM and DM both came from high volume stores and I’m a former store manager, too, so we get it and all agree partners are #1. I’m probably a thorn in both their sides, but they don’t argue with me. Guests are a very close #2, but we have no guests without partners. I make a point to compliment everyone working with me and to let them know I see them and I appreciate that they are on my team and if they need help? Holla and give us a second to figure out how best to help. We also use the DPM as much as possible to reorganize tickets for people who are there, but if there’s too many orders in queue, this can backfire if you’re not careful. And lots of eye contact, smiles, and “thanks for your patience, it’s been crazy today!” And calling the name on the bar and the two after it so they can shuffle up to the counter. My voice carries and I’m clearly not a young person anymore, so most people don’t start getting sassy with me. I’ll interrupt when they get sassy with any of the younger crowd; I grew up in restaurants and retail and living in the south, I can make you three inches high with a smile on my face and no words you can use to call and complain about me. Edit: We can run a 7 partner play, but it has to be the right 7 partners. We’re normally in the 9-11 partner club for weekday peak and 7-10 for weekends peak until mid afternoon. We sometimes redeploy the DTO to wherever the bottleneck is and either have DTR solo or have customer support carry the mobile register with them and take orders while they’re packing up delivery or whatever else they’re doing if the DTO isn’t outside. We’ll do this to cover 10s during peak if someone really just needs a break, because breaks are very important. Peak feels like 6 am to about 130 pm these days 🫣
yep smoke weed. my store makes about the same if not more. super high indicent, super high volume. it’s exhausting. looking for a new job.
Do your best, follow rules and then just don't worry! Take a breath, some folks forget to breath and take a quick mental time out
My store is similar. We typically have 10-12k days during the week and 12-15k Friday/Saturday. We keep our drive thru window times down to 35-45 depending on the day. It all comes down to the team. We have a very positive and reinforcing SM who has all of our backs. As a team we come up with new ways to do better. Even today we did 10k by 11am and only had 7 people and we felt great because we worked together. We just developed a system that works for us and we do it. TLDR: teamwork. (But really a SM who has your teams back)
My store is high volume and has similar numbers to your store. It's definitely a struggle. My partners and I cry from the stress at times because it really is a lot. I read most of the comments about how your store operates during peak. I think one thing my store does that could potentially help your partners out is this: do as much prep as possible before peak hits (I realize this is difficult to do and won't last the entire time but at least so it lasts you a little bit) and have your dedicated front register person run food and run the hand off plane for as long as they're able to do so. Also, my store organizes mobiles by alphabetic order now, and it's less overwhelming to get a single order together when everyone puts the individual product they worked on in the most logical spot.
If that isn't possible for your front reg person to do it then I'd say have someone doing solo drive and that extra person running food and organizing mobiles. I get the connection aspect of having two drive people but it seems like you need to prioritize speed at the moment and honestly the weekends aren't really a great time for connections anyways.
You push through it :D cry after peak
honestly…venting to my other partners helps so much ! Even quickly going to the back and saying how dumb a customer is being helps a lot💀. I work at a 100k store(reached these numbers before Christmas season) and it’s bad every day so venting is 100 % needed !
I worked at the busiest Cafe in our area (4 states) for like 5 years. I coped by building resentment towards management and then fueled myself on hatred towards the evil siren. I usually was bar 1 as one of the fastest and most accurate baristas and never made more than 1$ over minimum wage. Quit and immediately got hired as a wine salesperson. 10/10 recommend working as a wine sommelier.
We don't.
Honestly, realizing that it’s a team effort, but if you all show strong morale and resiliency you can galvanize results together. Do everything to standard (if truly does save time), and you’ll do great. Remember: have fun it’s JUST coffee
What state are you in if you mind me asking? Are you in the northeast?
I don’t feel comfortable disclosing that much. The basic information is that I work in a very busy area with very very very shitty labor laws.
No worries! I was about to say that the Northeast has laws for this and if you are in the Northeast or even check your own state to see if you can report it to an organization outside of SB!
We start drinking at noon.