Keys To The Shop : Equipping Coffee Shop Leaders

Ever find yourself saying or hearing things like "Well, we go through it!" or "That was so crazy, welcome to Saturdays!" or "That's just the way it is here!" and many other phrases that draw attention to some very difficult situation of common happening on the bar? I certainly have and often these things are said with a ting of resignation by people in positions who may actually have the ability to do something about it.

In today's Shift Break we will be talking about how we tend to glorify and resign ourselves to chaos and dysfunction and why we find ourselves embracing these problems as inevitable or even rites of passage, versus using our influence and abilities to try to innovate ways to alleviate needless stresses.

Related Episodes:

• Facilitating Success
• Fix the Small Stuff! : Management, Morale, Coffee Bar Culture
• 067 : 6 Truths About Power : The Responsible Approach to Power Dynamics in the Cafe
• 373 : The Owner's Role: 5 Behaviors for Effectiveness

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The best espresso machines in the world!

www.lamarzoccousa.com

Custom branded mobile apps for your shop!

www.espressly.co

The market place of coffee has seen rapid expansion of drive thrus and concepts focused on quick service. There is no doubt that customers appreciate speed when it comes to their coffee, better than speed though is speed plus service. These are the areas that today's guest is focused on delivering and continually enhancing in one of the country's fastest growing fast coffee concepts, Scooter's Coffee.

Jaime Denney joined Scooter's Coffee as the Vice President of Franchise Operations in November of 2022 to focus on initiatives aimed at increasing the speed and effectiveness of drive-thru service. Denney is a highly energetic and passionate, results-oriented operations leader with a proven record of achievement in the quick service restaurant industry. She has experience leading large cross-functional teams, delivering business results, and implementing foodservice solutions.

Prior to joining Scooter's Coffee, Denney was Vice President of Brand Operations at Jamba, where she worked cross-functionally with teams to drive franchise operational excellence and deliver quality training and support. She helped successfully migrate Jamba to a new POS system and implemented digital enhancements to set franchisees up for success during the COVID-19 pandemic. Denney, who has 15 years of coffee industry experience, also held leadership roles with Starbucks, Tropical Smoothie Café and Aramark.

With 613 locations and no sign of slowing, there is a good chance you have a Scooters Coffee near you.

Today we are going to get an inside look into what makes this company tick, the values that drive its drive thru empire, details about how Scooter's Coffee operates, and what we in the independent cafe community can learn from our corporate counterparts.

I hope you all enjoy and learn a lot!

We cover:

• Choosing markets for expansion
• Training managers
• Setting goals for speed
• Competing in the local market place
• Managing costs amid inflation
• Keeping things simple to help speed and service
• The limits of speed as a value
• Service and consistency
• Serving franchisees
• Wages, benefits, and culture
• Networking and tools for refinement

Links:

www.scooterscoffee.com

Related episodes:

• 127 : Passion and Curiosity: A conversation w/ Starbucks Global Sr. Project Manager, Major Cohen
• Episode 121 : Working from Your Strengths
• 161 : Founder Friday Drive-Thru Edition w/ Jasmine Diedrich Wilson of Diedrich Espresso
• 384 : How to Run a Successful Coffee Cart w/ Sarah Naylor of Daybreak Coffee Cart
• 163 : Lessons from Crush the Rush w/ Josh Little Field

Interested in leveling up your coffee shop or setting up 1:1 coaching?

• Click here to schedule a free consulting discovery call with KTTS
• Click here to book a formal one-on-one consulting call!

Visit our amazing Sponsors!

www.groundcontrol.coffee

www.pacficfoodservice.com

www.coffeefest.com

Your staff need you to empower them. We like to think that we do this but many times it amounts to surface level communication and resourcing that is out of step with the day to day reality your staff live.

In today's Shift Break we will be talking about a few questions you can ask yourself that will help you truly empower you staff to succeed in their work and give you peace of mind in the process.

Related Episodes:

• A Shift Break...on Shift Breaks

• Helping Managers Avoid Burnout
• Communicate, Duplicate, Repeat : Key habits that make information stick
• Empowering Staff to make the right Call

Visit our Sponsors!!!

The best espresso machines in the world!

www.lamarzoccousa.com

Custom branded mobile apps for your shop!

www.espressly.co

From the first day you open the doors to your coffee shop one thing confronts you as a constant. Change.

In order to run a healthy business we have to embrace changing things in the cafe in order to provide for the needs of the people and the operations that support them. The problem we run into though is when we act as though change is a nusance and in response we either refuse to change things, or we rush changes in order to get them over with. Inevitably this results in a lot of needless frustration and lost potential.

On today's episode we are re-airing an old episode (episode 80 for Feb of 2019) talking about how we should go about changing things in the coffee shop with respect to what your people need and in a way that makes the change actually stick.

I would encourage you to listen to this episode and have in mind a couple changes that you know need to be made in your shop. After listening, take the first step to make these changes using the workflow and see the difference it makes!

Related Episodes:

• 191 : Retraining your Staff on new Standards
• 194 : Encore Episode! Leadership in the Cafe: 10 Steps to being a People First Leader | Aired January 17 2017
• 339 : What Good Barista Training Produces
• 307 : 10 Simple ways to Level Up your Coffee Shop
• 291 : What to do if Your Baristas Wont Listen to You

Interested in leveling up your coffee shop or setting up 1:1 coaching?

• Click here to schedule a free consulting discovery call with KTTS
• Click here to book a formal one-on-one consulting call!

Visit our amazing Sponsors!

www.groundcontrol.coffee

www.pacficfoodservice.com

www.coffeefest.com

This is not just a question asked by an over eager customer haunting the front entrance 10 minutes before you open the shop. It is also a question a customer asks to themselves when they encounter a lack luster, apathetic, and seemingly disengaged staff and space.

In today's Shift Break we are going to discuss how the way we p[resent ourselves and our cafes to the customers will convey a lot about whether we are really and truly open.

Related episodes:

• Authenticity and Performance
• 367 : Designing Your Coffee Shop for Community w/ Dr. Lisa Waxman
• 340 : Encore Episode of "10 Reasons to Love the Customer"!
• Pre-Closing Madness
• Ignoring the Customer
• Spiders !

Visit our Sponsors!!!

The best espresso machines in the world!

www.lamarzoccousa.com

Custom branded mobile apps for your shop!

www.espressly.co

Coffee shops can have everything going for them on paper, but it is what is practiced in the day to day that determines whether you are successful. The truth is, mistakes happen. They are unavoidable. Certain mistakes, though, have a greater likelihood of causing damage and ruining what we have built.

Today we will be talking about 5 things that I would consider some of the biggest mistakes that coffee shops make. Each of them are not simply isolated accidents, but practices that we are prone to develop if we don't work hard to avoid and replace them with something better.

We will discuss:

• Comparison vs inspiration
• Isolating and not evolving
• Under resourcing the important things
• Failing to develop intentionally
• Passive leadership

Related Episodes:

• 173 : 5 Areas of Focus for Retailers
• 101 : Avoiding Legal Pitfalls in Retail w/ Specialty Coffee Attorney, Marshall Fuss
• 384 : How to Run a Successful Coffee Cart w/ Sarah Naylor of Daybreak Coffee Cart
• 341: How to Think About Success
• 227 : Connecting with Hearts and Minds

Interested in leveling up your coffee shop or setting up 1:1 coaching?

• Click here to schedule a free consulting discovery call with KTTS
• Click here to book a formal one-on-one consulting call!

Visit our amazing Sponsors!

www.groundcontrol.coffee

www.pacficfoodservice.com

www.coffeefest.com

Sustainability can become more of a reality if we determine to use the tools at our disposal wisely. Perhaps even more so if the tools we use to roast evolve to better address the many concerns we have in the coffee industry. That is what Bellwether hopes offer. With their all electric, ventless coffee roaster their goal is to empower any business to roast incredible coffee in-house and do so in a way that leads efforts in sustainability.

In this episode of Rate of Rise we are going to be talking with, Arno Holschuh.

Arno Holschuh is the Chief Coffee Officer at Bellwether Coffee, which manufactures the world's lowest-carbon coffee roaster. A veteran of the industry, he was one of the first employees at Blue Bottle and went on to manage their coffee operations and product. For the past eight years, he has been working with Bellwether to build a delicious, profitable, and sustainable future for coffee roasters, farmers and drinkers.

In our conversation we discuss important and direct questions about this new tech and its impact on both sustainability efforts and traditional coffee roasting.

My goal is that you leave this conversation with more clarity and better informed about your options when it comes to creating better sustainability outcomes through technology.

In our conversation we cover:

• Scaling and wholesale
• Trades offs and energy
• Who the machine is for
• What Bellwether aims to solve in coffee
• Tackling objections
• Responsible consist sourcing
• Innovation and collective effort
• Evolving traditional roasting

Links:

• www.bellwethercoffee.com

Related Episodes:

• Sustainability Series #2 : Importing & Roasting
• RoR #17 : Evolving Our Approach to Cupping w/ Charlie Habegger of Royal Coffee
• Special! "Thinking Differently" Series | Radical Sustainability w/ James Combs of Combs' Coffee
• RoR #6: Buying Less and Doing More w/ Ever Meister
• 286 : Coffee Roasting Best Practices w/ Scott Rao

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You have heard this many times from managers and trainers alike. The idea being that if you want your work to go at a quick and consistent rate then you have to work with purpose.

On today's Shift break we will explore this idea and its validity to produce results we want to see on the coffee bar, as well as how it can be used to produce results that we do not want to see.

Related episodes:

• Excellence In The Things We Hate
• Working Clean : Tips for keeping the bar looking and working well while you work
• Speed is not the Goal
• 163 : Lessons from Crush the Rush w/ Josh LittleField
• 167 : Handing off the Shift : 4 Tips to Avoid Chaos
• 002: Master Your Workflow w/ Ryan Soeder

Visit our Sponsors!!!

The best espresso machines in the world!

www.lamarzoccousa.com

Custom branded mobile apps for your shop!

www.espressly.co

Creating opportunities for a wide group of people to experience coffee seems like a goal we have for just for consumers. As good of a goal as that is, it is equally and maybe even more important that this goal be applied to the people who work in coffee. Sadly it is all too convenient for us to default to the easiest and most familiar options for those opportunities and as a result we tend to find a lack of diversity in the shop and beyond.

This does not need to be the case and to help show us what we can do what he is doing to address the issue, we are welcoming to the show, Keith Hawkins of The Color of Coffee Collective!

Keith Hawkins has been in the coffee industry for over 25 years and is a passionate coffee connoisseur. Keith's pragmatic approach to the coffee industry is to educate, introduce and inspire the consumer, curator and the curious to explore an awe inspiring journey of coffee that will certainly compel conversations and change.

Keith is the Founder of The Color of Coffee Collective and Koffee with Keith. The Color of Coffee Collective is comprised of diverse and talented minority coffee growers, farmers, producers, roasters, baristas, artists, and coffee enthusiasts. The mission of The Color of Coffee Collective is to educate people about the specialty coffee industry from a diverse perspective through symposiums, workshops, conferences, and open and honest conversations.

This is a wonderful, deep, and maybe hard conversation that I hope inspires you!

We cover:

• Keith's history in coffee
• Experiencing inequity in spite of qualifications
• Carving out a path and creating a conversation
• How the Color of Coffee Collective was founded
• Why we default to a lack of diversity
• Getting used to discomfort to make progess
• Resourcing the next generation
• Inclusive ambition and others focused legacy
• How the collective has already inspired change
• Supply chain equity
• Advice to the next generation seeking opportunities
• What we can do to take action in our businesses

Links:

www.colorofcoffeecollective.com

Instagram: @colorofcoffeecollective

Related episodes:

• 183 : Exploring Diversity w/ Phyllis Johnson
• 338: A Conversation w/ Martell Mason of The Sepia Coffee Project, Detroit, Michigan
• 322 : A Conversation w/ LaNisa Williams of Barista Life L.A.
• 225: Encore Founder Friday! Dorian Bolden of Beyu Caffe, Durham, NC

Interested in leveling up your coffee shop or setting up 1:1 coaching?

• Click here to schedule a free consulting discovery call with KTTS
• Click here to book a formal one-on-one consulting call!

Visit our amazing Sponsors!

www.groundcontrol.coffee

www.pacficfoodservice.com

www.coffeefest.com

Welcome to another before and after edition of Founder Friday! Occasionally we sit down with an entrepreneur who is in the proccess of opening their shop to talk about what they are planning, hoping for, and doing right now. Then we come back a few months post launch and see how things went getting open and the lessons learned in the process.

I am thrilled to have been able to sit down with frequent guest on the show, Jonathan Pascual of Tap Room Coffee in Atlanta. This first half was recorded in December 2021 as he was gearing up for the launch of his new roastery and cafe brand, Opo Coffee which has now been in operation for 2 months.

In this conversation we get to hear the details, planning, and hopes Jonathan had for Opo Coffee and then we get to see how things actually went and the wonderful way that Jonathan and his team have approached this new venture based on values, mission, respect, and a deep care for people.

This is going to be an episode full of incredible insight you won't want to miss!

We cover:

• The decision to expand and the first steps
• Institutional wisdom and learning as you go
• Having a strong team
• Values driven operations
• Taken a stepped approach to launching
• Generating excitement and serving people
• How to approach caring for multiple locations
• Making hard decisions
• Finding joy and energy amidst the work
• Trusting your people

Related episodes:

• 177 : Founder Friday w/ Jonathan Pascual of Taproom Coffee and Beer in Atlanta, Georgia
• COVID-19 Focus : Jonathan Pascual | Taproom Coffee and Beer | Atlanta, Georgia
• 329 : How to Teach Company Values to Your Staff
• 366: A Conversation w/ Chris Baca of Cat and Cloud Coffee
• 330 : Establishing Systems in Your Coffee Shop

Interested in leveling up your coffee shop or setting up 1:1 coaching?

• Click here to schedule a free consulting discovery call with KTTS
• Click here to book a formal one-on-one consulting call!

Visit our amazing Sponsors!

www.groundcontrol.coffee

www.pacficfoodservice.com