New Owner with Staff Drama..

[Jaycee]

I am a new drive-thru shop owner. I don't know about coffee; my interest was in the business ownership aspect. That was my first mistake! I am actually enjoying the venture, but I am not an active owner. I live nearly an hour from my shop and I can only be present a few times per week (never during busy times.) I seem to have assumed that the present economy would inspire people to act like adults and be mature in their work. At this point I have squabbling, tardiness, poor customer service, sloppy 'closing' (leaving an unstocked mess for the next day's opening barista) and other such drama. Each barista has privately pulled me aside to tell me how wonderful she is, and how many complaints she receives about my other staff members, and how awful their work ethic is. My problem is twofold. (if only!!) I am honestly not ABLE to arrive at the shop prior to ten in the morning on my best day, leaving me out in the cold for the busy hours. Secondly, I had a manager in charge when I purchased the place and she was the worst offender. I got rid of her, but now having been burned, I don't know how to go about managing the shop or hiring a manager that will be better than my first experience. I only have FOUR staff- how can these people NOT just be able to police themselves? Please help. I don't understand this!
(I perform the inventory and purchasing and those aspects are going well)

[Coffee Forum]

[Sidram]

Welcome to having employees. It is hard to manage a small business that is an hour a way. All I can say you just have to find a new manager. Another word of advice is a bad employe will not become a good employee because they get a raise. If it was me I would be looking for new employees. Also not sure what you expect but make sure you have plenty of employees to take the bad ones place. Make sure you are always accepting applications you never know when you will find a great employee or need to replace a bad one.You need to hire a manager if your an hour away.

[Terranova]

yea, agreed. you are lucky to live in the US, because over here in europe we dont have hire and fire...get rid of them and get some good ones..good luck

[QualityCoffee]

Yes get a good manager who is passionate about coffee and customer service, even if you have to pay up for their service...It will be necessary if you would like to succeed. If the manager opens every morning or closes every night they can police unacceptable closing practices.

[jeffjives2java]

Effective employee monitoring and management is a common pain point and area deserving of improvement, especially in the Coffee/Cafe industry where employees are often college-aged or younger and there's a very relaxed atmosphere. These days, I've found that there are some management tools which provide useful features to help keep this aspect of your operations more actively on the radar and easier to regulate.

For an example of this, check out Own Point of Sale. a tablet-based and cloud-supported (i.e. remotely accessible) Point of Sale solution that provides a back-end which tracks employee hours, hourly sales, and other critical operational data in real time so Owners such as yourself can keep a better pulse on in-store activity from off-location.