Green Siren
Central, TX
Female, 26
After working all day in a cubicle, I'd spend my nights as your friendly, neighborhood Starbucks barista! I remembered your name, made each drink exactly to your specifications and did it all with a bright smile. I've served celebrities, worked both drive thru & cafe stores, worked every holiday and have kept the customers from knowing about all the craziness that goes on behind the scenes... until now. Ask me anything.
It may be that none of the stores need new employees, that your hours don't match what they need, or that there are better applicants than you. There is advice above for the interview but sometimes the reasons you don't get hired are out of your control. Just keep gaining work experience and be the best employee you can be and when Starbucks needs someone, maybe you will be the best applicant at that time.
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No, managers don't need barista experience. My manager had come from Panera (or somewhere similar). I think the only advantage former barista managers have is that they really understand what a barista has to deal with--but it's not going to hurt you.
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I dressed business casual (nice slacks and top) because I wanted to show my manager I took the interview seriously. She dropped other candidates who showed up in jeans and tshirts. Again, my manager was my manager and all managers are different.
I think it took about half an hour and she mostly asked me why I wanted to work for Starbucks, my experience and how I could apply it to the job, what I thought of their communtiy service policy (my manager really loved it) and then posed a lot of scenarios to see what I thought I'd do. For instance, she'd ask, "There are two of you working. You're on register and the drip coffee needs to be changed out, tea needs to be made, there are dishes piling in the back, you are running out of cups and you have a line out the door. What do you do first? Why? What do you do next? Why? Say the third customer in line starts yelling because you're taking too long, how do you respond? Why?"
I don't know if there are right or wrong answers to this, but since I'd already worked in a coffee shop I had an idea of what order things need to be addressed in. Part of me thinks it's just a baseline to see if you can grasp the idea that while customers are really important to Starbucks, so is quality and you can't sacrifice one for the other.
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This has been answered in previous questions. Thanks.
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It depends on what shift you are... opening, mid and closing shifts all have different tasks. Since I mostly worked closing shifts, I'll talk about that one.
Usually upon arrival my shift manager would have me do a "spin," or to a quick touch up of the entire store. Then depending on where I was needed most, she'd put me on either bar or register. While we still had three people working, at a certain point I'd either be sent to deep clean the bathrooms or start to break down all the dishes that needed to be washed, and wash them. Once the dishes were washed one of the two baristas was usually sent home and 5-10 minutes before close the remaining one would pack up the pastries that were still good and throw out the expired ones. Finally, once the store closed one person would sweep and mop the floor, clean and set up the condiment bar for the following day, prep all the materials for the openers (measure out coffee, put tea bags into containers, etc) while the person on bar would clean the machine, set the clean cycle and prep the bar area for the openers (enough lids out, fill the espresso machines, etc).
Generally as a closer my job was to make sure a) we served customers to the best of our ability, b) the store was as clean as it could possibly be and c) we left the store in top condition for the openers to make their lives a little easier.
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I got about $20 per week... about $1 per hour worked. Definitely not a BIG PLUS but enough to be useful.
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Practice, practice, practice is the best advice I can give you. And read the cards if you store location has them in the office (you shift or store manager should know where they are). Nobody expects you to be perfect you first few weeks so take advantage of that and don't be afraid to ask questions to make sure it's correct!
Eventually it will become second nature but that only comes from doing it repetitively. Also, here is a reddit thread that may help with visualizing the sequencing: https://www.reddit.com/r/starbucks/comments/1m47xw/how_to_properly_sequence/
(It's a year old, but to my knowledge, the sequencing hasn't changed).
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