Keys To The Shop : Equipping Coffee Shop Leaders
A coffee podcast providing coffee shop owners and leaders, with insights, inspiration, and the tools you need to grow and advance your coffee business or coffee career. We learn from experts both in and outside the coffee industry as they deliver specific, practical, and actionable advice about ownership, optimization, profitability, barista work, employee culture, management, scaling, leadership, personal development, and anything else that will help you achieve success in the coffee shop.
Episodes
In the busy cafe we tend to want to power through the work and in the process we rush the customer. The average cafe guest can feel as though they are simply being handled or herded instead of welcomed and served.
Today on Shift Break we are talking about how and why we need to fight against the urge to rush the customer and what it looks like to help them truly connect with and experience our unique offerings and hospitality.
Rel...
Everybody leaves. That is the constant of working in coffee shops. How they leave and how you respond to their absence for their good, the team that remains and for your business is a question of how much intentionality you bring to the inevitable departure of staff.
Today we are going to explain how we can view turn-over and use it to better our leadership, to streamline and make more effective operations, and to improve our hiri...
It's Founder Friday! And this one is quite special. Nori and Tin Burmudez founded Corridor Flow in the Fall of 2019 with community and relationship as their central mission. I was lucky enough to work with them in their beginning stages and for the last almost six years, their commitment to their vision have shown itself in their deeply rooted and instantly resonant presence in their Lomita community.
Nori comes from the world of ...
Training employees remains one of the central tasks of cafe ownership and management. Rather than training from a central standard and source that has been thoughtfully crafted to onboard and develop the skills of the barista to meet specific standards, there is a temptation to want to lean on training by osmosis or by committee where the new hire is simply assigned a shift schedule and told they will learn from the other experienc...
If you are like a lot of owners or managers you might find the idea of reminding and repeating yourself to be at the top of the "most annoying things I should not have to do" list. To a degree you are right. But only partly. It really depends on how those tools are used and how you approach your own role in the cafe
Today we are going to explore how the tools of repetition and reminders are actually forms of guidance that, in their...
We talk about how we want to provide an experience for the guest, to connect with them, to make a positive impact. The way to get there though is through embracing what may seem like the opposite of what we want, the transactional. Gasp!
Today on Shift Break we will be talking about why the transaction between you and the customer, the ordinary exchange of money for goods, is the gateway and foundation to building a truly remarkab...
On average, when I look into a cafe's operational materials and systems, one of the main things that is either not developed well, developed but not updated, or just not there at all, are job descriptions.
For many coffee businesses, there is a default to describing their growth and thus operation as "organic" and as a result, while some progress is made, they can tend to find themselves hitting a wall where everyone feels a consta...
Who we are when nobody s looking is really who we are. There are variations of this phrase and for most it is convicting and motivates us to increase the integrity of how we move in life and work. In the cafe, we talk a lot about hospitality regarding guests and more recently we have talked about hospitality for the staff. But what about the people that support and are vested in your businesses through services and products?
Today ...
Being a manager in a coffee shop is not just about extra administrative tasks, its about leading and guiding people well through the work of the cafe. Many managers in bars around the world are kept buried in tasks and don't have a clear view of the la...
Coffee shops are dynamic places that require a ton of focus on what seems like an endless sea of urgent things. Some are actually more important than others and learning what they are and training yourself and your staff to focus on and cultivate them from the start can help set the next years of your businesses life up for healthy operation and growth.
Today we are going to explore what areas you need to be focused on int he first...
Once we get a little bit of authority as a trainer, manager, or leader in the coffee shop we tend to dream about and focus on all the things we want to change. Unfortunately the projects that we know will improve things often do not get the reception we want from the boss and we feel dejected and frustrated.
Today on Shift Break we will be talking about the need to have pat...
We are back with anew round of show floor interviews from Coffee Fest! This time we were in NYC at the Keys to the Shop booth and got four wonderful presenters and experts to chat about training, entrepreneurship, and trademarking law!
First up to talk about effective barista training strategies we have our friend Antoine Franklin!
Antoine Franklin (better known as “Twizz”) born and raised...
Maintaining the functionality of your equipment is one of the main tasks involved in running a shop. You yourself may wan to be trained in machine tech, you may want to hire a teach or tech company to service your cafe's equipment, or you might want to raise up an internal technician.
Today on the show we are goping to talk about training technicians and how to coffee techs and owners alike should approach the relationship that hel...
There are an incredible number of tasks associated with running a coffee roastery. The busy work of keeping things going often gets in the way of working on the main areas that will actually move the needle and build a successful operation.
Today's guest comes to us with a lot of experience working in roasteries and consulting operators in the areas that he has identified as "The Core 7" essential areas of roastery operations. I ...
When you onboard baristas, the work is just beginning. Part of the privilege of leadership is to provide ongoing coaching and training to all staff. This creates the kind of quality and excellence we want customers to experience and the kind of ongoing education you give to staff will determine if they are well equipped to serve.
Today on Shift Break we will be talking abou...
The world of cafe management is full of great ideas that, if applied well, would indeed change things for the better. The idea around leader ship role being primarily about "setting people up for success" is one of those principles. The trouble is it often stops with just the idea and is not as often applied in a tangible way.
Today we are going to explore what it really means to set your staff up for success in the daily operation...
Simplicity, focus, community, and legacy. These are some words that I feel apply to the steady and excellent service of Hyperion Espresso these last 30 years of operation. When you can measure your business in decades and look back with pride and a full heart, you now you have crafted something lasting and valuable. Today we are going to explore the story of Hyperion Espresso in Fredricksburg, VA w/ co-founder Ana Brugos
It is a common weakness of hiring managers and desperate owners alike. We hire people that are not the right fit and spend most of our time trying to get them to change once they are working in the cafe. This leaves us burned out, it leaves the employee frustrated, and the business suffers in the process.
Today on Shift Break we will be talking about how e can avoid hiring ...
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