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One of the biggest mistakes new business owners make is they treat their staff as a commodity. Labor costs are important but what about turnover and training costs? What costs more? What is your recruitment strategy? Why will someone want to work for you? Are you a good manager? People forget that hiring, training, retaining and managing staff is a difficult job.
Many coffee shop owners do not provide adequate product knowledge and training. The result is ineffective staff, reduced profits and irritated customers. Handing over a manual is one of the most common forms of staff training. Why should a staff member read a manual about coffee? How are they going to extract the right information from the manual and apply it? What if they are visual learners? If your staff is uneducated about the business concepts and products how are they going to answer customer questions? Where do you think the knowledge is going to come from?
Owners often forget to give reward when it is due. Owners expect instant dedication and interest in the bottom line. They forget that they make the profits and therefore they are the ones that really need to care. Owners need to give staff a reason to care.
Coffee in itself is complicated and so is the brewing process, especially for specialty drinks. Staff needs to be trained on product knowledge and brewing methods to ensure that they are successful. If you give your staff the resources they have the potential to be great. You can’t just tell someone to learn, you need to tell them why they need to learn and how it affects their job and the business as a whole. The truth is that people work harder when they are invested. Recognition and respect are the two most motivating factors for staff.
It is not enough for them just to show up everyday, people want to have responsibility and purpose. Two way communications is critical to staff relations. As a manager you need to communicate your expectations clearly. Hiring and training the wrong individual is a poor investment because turnover is costly. The level of service increases with long-term employees. It is worth the time and money to invest.
A little inside knowledge, and some action, could be all that is standing between wealthy coffee shop owners, and some coffee shop failures.
Unfortunately, many coffee shops fail. And we discovered that by NOT asking themselves ONE SIMPLE QUESTION, many owners have set themselves up for disaster.
There was a series of events that resulted in us publishing some insider information, and offering a free report about that ONE question. To read the details of our coffee shop failure discoveries (click here).
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