Cuppy's Coffee on Keeping Your Baristas

Another coffee house is opening down the block and you’re concerned about the impact that will have on your sales. This is not the time to worry. In fact you should welcome the competition. Americans love having a choice, but also love quality products, quality service and a quality experience. You offer all the above so the competition will be of no long lasting consequence. However you may want to shore up your quality service for good measure. If you recognize that you’ve invested many hours, not to mention money, in training your baristas that offer quality service, you should make every effort to keep your baristas grounded and loyal to you.
A well trained barista is very hard to come by, so your employees look more and more promising to your competition and they may try to recruit them. To avoid the migration of your baristas to the competition, a few simple techniques and people skills may be able to keep your investment rock solid loyal to you.
Take an active approach in connecting with your employees. Here are a couple of key points to be aware of:
· Your team members are people first, employees second
· Start each day off by connecting in a non-work way. Keep it casual. How are you doing? A lot of employees appreciate your interest. How is the team doing? Ask them for their input about the store. You will also gain valuable knowledge about other employees and operations that you may not have been aware of.
· How can I help? Offer to help. When you’re not afraid to get down and dirty, neither will your employees.
· Let them know you want them there and value them as a person. Acknowledgement of this magnitude will build loyalty and dedicated employees

Employees don’t quit jobs, they quit bosses. The secret to keeping good employees is simple, “Treat your baristas as people first and employees second” Jeni Habas, Director of Human Resources at Cuppy’s states.
In the end, keeping the good ones comes down to connecting with your employees on a regular basis. The great news is that this doesn’t cost a dime to keep your baristas continuing to give you and your customers that great quality service.