Keys To The Shop : Equipping Coffee Shop Leaders

Your coffee packaging holds more than just coffee. It holds an incredible amount of potential for communication of values, impact on the supply chain, and how coffee itself is percieved and succeeds in the global market. Packaging might not seem like the most compeling topic but the package itself may be on of the main tools that compels consumers and how we approach it matters greatly.  Today on...

We often talk about charitable assumption and being proactive to address the needs of our guests. But how often are we considering the way we approach the relationship between owners and managers? There are a lot of expectations going both ways but not always a lot of understanding.  Today on Shift Break we are going to talk about how if we can lean into communication and the spirit of mutuality t...

Good intentions are nice and all, but how do you make sure that you can actually deliver on your ideals for quality, service, and beyond? The answer is systems. Unfortunately many shops are organizationally flying by the seat of their pants and delivering an inconsistent and frustrating experience. A well developed set of processes, lists, and procedures will give consistency to the standards we s...

When the customer first walks in the what do you think about them? Well chances are your immediate thoughts will be based on your assumptions formed in conversation with fellow baristas and the inside jokes we have at their expense. Yes, customers can say and do very similar things but why is our default to seek out ways to dismiss and make a caricature of them rather than trying to serve them wit...

It's pretty easy to write our a set of company values. But how do you teach them in such a way that your staff own them and live by them? Now THAT is not easy. If you want to teach your staff the company values so that you are confident that they know, understand, and act according to them, even if you are not there, then todays episode is for you. We will be talking with about the five tips and m...

One of the questions I get asked a lot by consulting clients is when they should instal or think about hiring a manager. I see lots of coffee shops get into the mindset that they "should" have a manager but I don't often see people give competing reasons other than it is part of the coffee shop structure they see elsewhere. Today on Shift Break we are going to chat about a couple reasons you shoul...

Navigating our way through the coffee industry can be a daunting task. Especially if you want to make a difference. As you go you are confronted with many challenges that threaten your stability and test both your resolve and faith in the reasons you began the journey in the first place. Through it all though, there is a kind of wisdom, strength, and perspective that you gain if you use your exper...

Today we get to talk with a pillar and foundational member of the specialty coffee community, Phuong Tran of Lava Java For 20 years now Phuong Tran has been the owner/operator of the famed coffee shop, Lava Java in Ridgefield Washington. There she discovered a passion for coffee that led her to not only craft the shop into a beacon of hight standards in the beginning of the 3rd wave of coffee, but...

As we set out in our coffee journeys as either entrepreneurs or professionals within a company, we tend to seek out and cultivate groups of people around us who offer affirmation almost exclusively. Not matter what we are doing, the mindset we have and therefore the mindset we want other to have is to only offer positive and encouraging words. Trouble is that sometimes those words can cover up rea...

The smell of coffee is one of the great joys in this life. As professionals we take this important sensory aspect of coffee and build tools and protocols around it so we can fully and accurately assess a coffee's quality and ultimately serve something consistently wonderful to our customers. In order to do this we need to bring balance, calibration, and objectivity to the personal tastes and exper...

Everyone's favorite coffee culture commentator and meme lord, Alan Jarrar is in the house! If you are like me and follow the account "50%Arabica" on Instagram, you know full well that there is more to the funny content than what you see on the surface. There is a world of professional coffee experience and philosophy that fuels not just the great memes at 50%Arabica but now the great coffee being...

We have to get the shop closed! Fast! Question is, at what cost? For most of us we engage in pre-close with an aggression that lies our stated commitment to hospitality. Customers are frequently put off by how we go about re-closing and we a frequently behind the eight ball with unrealistic expectation fueling our aggressive attitudes towards it.  Pre-closing is crucial part of the day's work that...

When you have a trainer on staff there are specific responsibilities you have as a leader that will determine their success and how happy you are with their performance. Often we can set someone in a position and let them loose with little to no guidance. Of course this is a recipe for disaster and today we are going to be talking about how to provide structure for trainers hat you lead and also w...

Customers have opinions that we disagree with. This is a forever truth of running a business. They have preferences and sometimes they will be disappointed in their experience and take to Yelp to voice their opinion. That can be very frustrating, especially if you feel you are doing everything "right".  The temptation is to be defensive, fight, and essentially make the reviewer the enemy. Problem...

Community exists all around us. When we start a coffee shop we see the blossoming of community in our customer base, baristas bonding with one another, and then across the industry people of similar interests who are desirous to learn, grow, and connect make an effort to establish friendships. One of the ways these communities thrive is when people step up and organize.  Today on Keys to the Shop...

Hiring baristas can bring a lot of uncertainty. It is because of this we tend to go for people who may not make great leaders but default to following. Problems come when it is time to appoint a manager or have people take on. more responsibility and you don't have any candidates that are right for the role.  On today's Shift Break we will be talking about how we should be hiring for future leader...

Welp, KTTS is now 5 years old! In this time KTTS has aired 560 episodes and is closing in on 2 million downloads around the world and it simply feels surreal. I have been so blessed by the guests on this show, you the audience, and most of all, my biggest supporter, my wife.  SO...on this episode my lovely wife Lynnsy takes to the microphone again to interview me about the journey over the past 5...

Chances are good that if you are listening to this podcast, you want to grow in your career or your business. That makes sense especially since that is one of the goals of this show! That said, there are some problems with growth and the expectations we have related to it that create a dissatisfaction, self sabotage, and  rob us of the joy of where we are right now I want take this last Shift Brea...

Relationships are what the coffee industry is built on. The quality of those relationships determines the strength of the supply chain and the success of all involved. One of the most important relationships that is not talked about very often is that between green buyer and the broker.  Today we on the Rate of Rise series from Roast Magazine we will be diving into this subject with the author of...

Creating a path forward and up in the coffee industry sometimes requires we take matters into our own hands and build the opportunities for ourself and others that we don't see. This is exactly what today's guest, LaNisa Williams did with Barista L.A.  LaNisa Williams has been in coffee over 14 years as a barista, manager, trainer/educator, and all around inspiration. At a critical point in her li...

One of the ways we like to make our mark as leaders is by introducing various ideas, initiatives, items, and changes to the shop that we hope will make an impact. I know I have certainly seen putting new things in place as my main service to those I was tasked with leading. Thing is, instead of creating a positive impact as we hope, it often does the opposite.  On this Shift Break we chat briefly...

How we market our values to potential employees and the consumer is often at odds with what we actually do. In a past episode we called this the "Values - Action Gap". Question is, what is the result of this gap on the people who sign on with us and believe our marketing only to discover it was insincere at best or an outright lie at worst? For many the result is a condition called "Moral Injury"...

It's Founder Friday! Today we are going to be exploring the story of a ground breaking and standard setting Italian coffee roaster and cafe. Our guest on this last Founder Friday of 2021 is the founder of Caffe Artigianale, Francesco Sanapo! From learning the classic Italian way of coffee working for his fathers coffee bar at age 14 - to discovering specialty coffee eventually becoming a 3 time It...

We love to train our baristas to up-sell as a way to increase our over all ticket amounts. The way we do this tends to be focused more on getting money in the short term for our benefit than helping customers get things they will like which will benefit everyone in the long term.  Today on shift break we will be talking about how to approach up-selling and the art of using it as toll to serve the...

This year the World Barista Championship was held in Milan, Italy. The winner of that competition accomplished not only a historic win as the first champion to hail from a producing country, but accomplished a life long dream born from a long history of developing as a person and a professional all to better serve others.  Today we get to talk with the new World Barista Champion, Diego Campos of C...