The Customer of Tomorrow

By Chris Deferio  |  Keys to the Shop  |  4/8/2021

When we talk with customers in the shop and communicate to with them through our messaging and marketing, we are creating the customer of tomorrow. We create the demand we seek to satisfy in the daily small interactions multiplied a million times over. The compound effect is what we call consumer demand.

Trouble is that we act as though consumer taste and demand just drops out of the sky fully formed like a baby elephant. This is a problem for a couple reasons. In short we don’t embrace our role in influencing the market and that causes trouble.

As I mentioned, we create the customer collectively. When we don’t engage customers with the idea that we are investing as much into the future of the industry as we in our present then we fail to create a sustainable value proposition for the customer. This happens because when we are myopic in our thinking we are myopic in our actions and what we create will inevitably be shallow and also inaccessible.

There is a wide and diverse world of specialty coffees out there and an equally large and diverse set of customers to match to those coffees. How we talk about, champion, and develop markets for them will determine the depth and stability of tomorrow’s industry.

-Chris

Related episode:

 

 

 

 

Simplicity is the MVP of the Cafe

By Chris Deferio  |  Keys to the Shop  |  3/27/2021

 

We have this tendency in the coffee shop to either not have much of any system or structure, or have incredibly complex of convoluted systems and structures. In both cases we are guilty of shallow thinking because the purpose of a system is to equip the user with clarity and to make the job, be it a small or large job, eater to accomplish.

What we need is a dedication to what is called the Minimum Viable Product (MVP). An MVP, in this case a system that helps your staff get the shop’s work done consistently and well,  is created be effective without fluff, without waste. It is created for a specific task and with respect to the people that are responsible for using it. Waste may be wasted words or wasted time in the creation process.

Something to remember, when you don’t have any systems in place, almost anything will better than what you have. Get started and implement something quickly. Yes it has to be well thought out and effective, but don’t fall into the perfectionism that causes so many operators to either do nothing for fear of doing something wrong, or to create something so bloated and complex that it is unusable and intimidating.

How can you get started now and create a simple system for your cafe inventory, cleaning procedures, coffee bean ordering, etc. What is the MVP that will be easy to use and effective all at the same time.

Start small, start soon, and you will soon see a big difference in your business.

-Chris

 

Related Episode:

 

 

 

Spiders and Customer Service

By Chris Deferio  |  Keys to the Shop  |  3/14/2021

Spiders get a bad rap. 

It’s true that they are generally creepy. Also true that some could even kill you…BUT!…forgetting the fact that the usual visiter to a spider’s web is usually not there FOR dinner but AS dinner, there is still something we can learn from spiders when it comes to hospitality. 

In The coffee shop, when guest enters our cafes they are often not noticed. This lack of recognition continues throughout their time in the shop and then through to leaving. 

A spider is in tune with what is happening because it is connected to its web and can discern and recognizes every movement and disturbance. Not so with a spider. You see a spider relies on every “guest” for its survival and places a high value on each opportunity. If a flY lands even at the furthest point in the web, the spider is on it. 

We need to be a bit more like this in the shop. Instead of being disconnected to everything on the other side of the bar, we need to work to be in tune with and connected to the what is happening in all corners of the cafe space. When a guest enters, when their child spills a hot chocolate, when they seem confused as to where the trash can or bathroom is, and as they depart. We need to be so connected to the space that we can sense their movements and needs and then respond accordingly or even preemptively. 

Now we don’t rely on the customer in quite the same way as a spider does a fly, but in reality our survival depends on how vigilantly we attend to their experience with us. 

-Chris

Related Episode:

Accountability goes both Ways

By Chris Deferio / Keys to the Shop / 2/12/2021

When we think about accountability we tend to think about holding others accountable for the work and ideas that we want them to practice. After all, we are paying them money to do a particular job and as the boss we want to make certain that the job gets done accordingly. Interestingly, as much as we worry about this, and are sometimes consumed by fear thinking about people not performing well, we tend to keep it all locked up in our heads where it never has a chance to make any difference accept to make you more anxious, stressed, and angry as you ruminate on how you really want people to do good work. We need to take the ideas and hopes out of the head and into real life. Make accountability a real process by which your desires are known clearly. Only then can you build other systems that serve this vision by equipping people with the resources they need.

Accountability the other way

Accountability does not only go in the direction of boss to employee. In order for it to be effective it must also be from employee to boss. You must make yourself accountable to those you lead in order for them to have the kind of buy in necessary to gain momentum.

If you find you or your employees are avoiding accountability it is a sure sign that you have something to hide. Mainly it means that you are afraid of being found out to be less than engaged in the work whereas if you were engaged nd motivated accountability would be a welcome thing.

Conclusion

In the end, accountability is not just about making sure people do what they are supposed to do. It is a building block and tool to discover both your own and others level of commitment and to give that commitment energy while simultaneously exposing  and creating pressure on you or your staff in order to change how you are approaching the work or, in some cases, to separate people from the work as it is not a right fit.

My encouragement to you is to lean into accountability and embrace what it reveals about both yourself and your staff. It may not be immediately pleasant, but it pays off big over time.

-Chris

Related episode:

 

 

I Hope it Sticks

By Chris Deferio / Keys to the Shop / 1/23/2021

 

When it snows in Kentucky we have to take advantage of it!

I am from upstate NY and snow is just a part of life there. Even though we got excited about the snow when it first falls, we hardly think of it as an urgent matter. That’s because it is reliable. It sticks. 

In Louisville, where I live now, the ground is a lot warmer and the snow has a harder time accumulating. It doesn’t stick. 

It strikes me that, In most cafes, when leadership starts to adopt new positive practices and programs, it gives hope to the staff, but ultimately because of the climate of most shops, the staff are thinking, “I hope it sticks”. 

Preparing the ground to receive change well takes time, intention, and consistency. If we want our cafes to have thriving cultures where positive and healthy environments are just a part of life there then we need to prepare  the ground and patiently pour into it before we see any accumulation.  

Let’s turn “I hope it sticks” into a confident and excitement that it will, in fact, stick  because we know the ground has been prepared for it. 

-Chris

Grocery Shopping and Training Success

By Chris Deferio / Keys to the Shop / 1/15/2021

 

Most barista training is ineffective. 

The major reason for this is not because employees aren’t up to the challenge but because we who are doing the training are operating within a framework that makes mediocrity, miscommunication, and confusion an inevitability.

Let dive into this just a bit. 

Most cafes set up their training to be done in intensely in the beginning of a baristas time of employment after which it just drops off and they have to fend for themselves. So an operator can be forgiven for feeling the need to cram a bunch of stuff into a small space of time because they know that the system is not set up for continued education. 

Think of it this way the way we onboard people in the shop tends to be similar to how those of us int he West grocery shop. We make a big list of all the things we might need in a week or two weeks and we get it done as quick as possible. Contrast this to how a lot of people in Europe shop where the goal is not necessarily to stock pile and “get it done” but to focus on what you need in the short term and do so in a way that is stinkingly less stressful and chaotic. 

It is not a perfect comparison but when it comes to training I would much prefer to set things up based on the latter ideal. Training based on need, and set up to be done more frequently.

Giving people a boat load of information in intensive sessions is overwhelming and leads a lot of the information just going to waste because the barista either does not have the capacity or opportunity to use it. Same thing happens when you think, “Hey let me try this new vegetable I have never used” and it ends up rotting in the back of the fridge. 

The way we can set baristas up for success is buy creating systems that extend the training over the long term and focus on delivering to the barista the practical skills and knowledge they will need for where they are in their coffee journey. 

If we want great coffee experiences for our guests and our staff then creating practical, long term training systems is a must.

Until then, a lot of what we communicate in these intense training session will continue to rot in the back of the metaphorical fridge. 

-Chris

 

Related Episode:

 

 

Use your Focus

By Chris Deferio / Keys to the Shop / 1/5/2021

 

You go where you look.

This is something they told me in driving school when I was 16. If you are going off the road and you look at a tree, you’ll tend to steer the car into the tree. If you look at the grass it is more likely you will steer onto the grass. This is true because when we get into stressful situations our reasoning skills are greatly diminished and we rely on the mechanics and connection between our eyes and hands that we have developed our whole lives.

When we occupy positions of power and authority we have the ability to steer the ship more than anyone else. What we focus on will either guide the company and the people into a good place or a not so good place.

Now at this point, if you have read or listened to any leadership material in your time, what I am saying sounds suspiciously like the “Law of Attraction”. In some ways it kind of is. A true application of the LoA is not a passive wishing, yes it starts with the mind and its focus, but then it is followed by actions.

If I want to focus on consistency in drink quality across the cafe then I need to enter each day determined to think about that goal and look for areas that need improvement, areas that work well and need bolstering, tools to help me achieve my goal etc. When I am focused, the solutions problems and solutions start to present themselves and we start to create momentum in the direction of the goal. It happens so naturally that it seems like magic. In reality we were just steering the ship based on where we determined our vision would focus.

As we look to the new year with hope we cannot allow ourselves to do so in passivity. Purposeful attention and focus followed by consistent actions over time is how we actualize the change we want to see.

So let’s start the new year by determining that we will use our focus as a tool to achieve specific and positive outcomes.

-Chris

 

 

What is wrong with “Going above and beyond”?

By Chris Deferio / Keys to the Shop / 12/12/2020

When we hear this phrase we automatically think of the exemplary employee. They don’t just stop at what their job description says, they invent new ways to serve, create, support etc. We love this attribute in a barista, manager – anyone really.

We love it so much that we begin to expect it from all of our employees. When we think someone is not “going above and beyond” we start to doubt their commitment. We compare them to their coworkers who stay longer, take on extra responsibility, and really just make us and our business look good. Problem here is that we are getting what I will call a false negative. The employee is not doing a bad job at all, they are simply being held to an unfair secret standard.

By making going above and beyond the expectation and not the exception we are setting up otherwise stellar employees for failure in our eyes. I see this a lot when owners secretly hold everyone to a standard that is not explicitly stated and then go on to punish those who dont guess their wishes with a lack of praise, lack of resource, attention, and opportunity. Going above an beyond cn be rewarded without creating a false dichotomy of, you are either doing more than expected, or failing. I am not sure why owners tend to be so black and white but it has to stop. 

There is another manifestation of this mentality that is self-imposed but also facilitated and supported by the company. Managers especially can be prone to over working themselves by taking on too many responsibilities and tasks in an effort to prove their worth. This is often due to a lack of clarity in their role, lack of accountabilit, and especially because of a lack of affirmation and care from their boss. Remember, the boss may be giving off those vibes we described above where they save their praise for the new who do extra and so the employees who want to be seen and rewarded are now under pressure to perform accordingly. Even without this external pressure we can create this expectation for ourselves and the only way it can be combated is for you, as a boss, to call it out and fix whatever underlying accountability, clarity, and affirmation issues enabled the behavior to begin with. 

We can enjoy and even reward employees for going above and beyond. We can, ourselves, go above and beyond in our roles. What we cannot do is allow these expressions of passion and generosity to be motivated by unfair top-down pressure or insecurity with our role in the organization. 

Work is already filled with enough difficulties. Let’s not create more by letting “Going above and beyond” to go too far.

-Chris

 

 

Practice Professional Distancing

By Chris Deferio / Keys to the Shop

Leaders and managers are most effective when there is professional distance between them and the people they lead.

Now this sounds pretty antithetical to the notion of gaining trust, leading with humility, and building and engaged team. All of these things seem like they require us to be close and highly involved. Yes and no. You see, as leaders we have authority, and that authority creates a certain needed distance because of the power difference between us and the employees. Each group needs to function and build momentum in their roles separate from the other but not 

Often we try to close this gap by attempting to become simply friends and co-workers with our baristas. In short, we try get rid of our authority and almost apologize for it as we feel guilty for even having it in the first place. This is a gross misuse of power which is meant to be used in service to those we lead, not cast aside in a bid to win relational or emotional points. 

The distance between boss and employee does not have to be void of empathy, vulnerability, humility, or friendliness. Those things are key to being able to aim your power well and every employee who has had a bad boss would agree that they want you to pursue those qualities. But don’t equate those things with just being your employees buddy. No employee wants a boss who refuses to be a leader and tries to soft-pedal their authority in a bid for what amounts to nothing more than personal validation and fear. 

If we want to be good bosses and use our inherited authority well, we will be careful to maintain the professional distance necessary to do our jobs without being entangled with the emotions that come from trying to build personal relationships ahead of professional ones. If you talk about anything but the work, hang out outside of work, and then try to assert your authority in needed circumstances, you will find that it is much harder for people to take you seriously, and also it is much harder for you to make unbiased decisions as now you are too close to the staff to be objective. 

As community driven as a coffee bar is, the place of professional distance is not antithetical to its thriving, but actually critical to its survival. I would encourage you to assess where you are in all of this. Are you afraid of your authority? Have you tried to create trust and buy-in through personal relationships? Maybe you are on the other side and are so distant that you cannot even empathize let alone lead effectively. 

In both cases an adjustment is needed.

If you want to find success for yourself and your team it starts with professional distance 

 

-Chris

Related Episode:

 

 

Is this for You?

By Chris Deferio / Keys to the Shop

When it comes to how we serve people in the cafe, we will inevitably default to our true feelings about what it is we are doing. We can talk all day long about the vision mission and values of the company but if it does not make its way into our attitude both in and out of work then every time we clock in we are in a race against time. How long will it take before we crack, before we break down, before we show our true colors. 

Part of how we have to train for our work in hospitality if to adopt a mindset and attitude of hospitality outside work. We bring our true selves to work everyday. It is exhausting to pretend to like people, to like seeing them, to smile while doing it. So we have 3 choices. 

  1. Get out of service

The hard truth is that not everyone is meant to be in the hospitality industry. At least not in a customer facing way. To deny this is foolish because we have all had experiences with people who we think “Wow. Who hired them?!” Are we willing to admit that we could also be spoken of the same way? What’s more, are we willing to embrace this not as a negative but as a helpful guide to other, more fulfilling, work? 

The world of coffee retail would be spared bad service experiences many time over if we were more honest with ourselves about our capacity and fit for different parts of the industry. 

  1. Stay in service but burn out

The other option is that you fight against what may be a sign that you need to relocate and simply allow the tension to build up. I have seen this time and a gin where baristas who are almost combative to customers allow themselves to continue on and are allowed to continue on to the detriment of themselves, the customer, and the business. This leads to burn out and bitterness 

  1. Stay in service and become service oriented

The third option is the option of transformation. I am not a fatalist. I believe if you or I have a particular bent in terms our perceptions and attitudes, we can change that. It starts with being honest both about the current state of ones attitude, then about your desire to change it. You might be an owner, manager, or barista, no matter, your attitude is something that can be changed and in doing so it changes how you show up and traction’s you take in the cafe. 

The whole guest experience is not secured by systems but by the people who use them. The inner world of those people will either bring everything up, or bring the whole thing down. 

Let’s get honest about where we are. The industry we love depends it. 

Contact me at : Chris@keystotheshop.com

 

 

Making trust the Norm

By Chris Deferio / Keys to the Shop

Our job in leadership is to provide the conditions under which both staff and customers will succeed.

For customers this means they are successful in their bid to have a great experience in your shop. The music, the coffee, the service, all of the details and parts that make up the whole are consistently there. They come to trust us. Then they bring friends, gush about it to family, and, because of consistency in delivering on those details, they become dedicated long term customers.

The same dynamic is true also of your staff.

The roll you play is to resource them with the elements they need to be well and do well in your shop. This is an ongoing pursuit. It is not an initiative, or a project. It is a way of being that, over time, will win the trust of the staff that they can count the leadership to be consistently providing and pushing the provision of the resources and conditions under which they can thrive. This in turn creates momentum and the staff start to take more ownership, give of themselves more generously, and become cheerleaders for your business. This only happens for both customer and employees when trust becomes is the norm.

When there are breaks from that norm, which there absolutely will be, they will draw upon the history of generous normative behavior and be more likely to give grace.

Without a longterm constant commitment to developing trust through your actions, you won’t have a culture whose norm is trust but one where trust is the exception and disfunction and doubt is the norm.

It all takes time to develop this culture of trust, but the results are exponentially rewarding!

-Chris

 

Contact me at : Chris@keystotheshop.com

Related Episodes:

 

The Structure of Generosity

By Chris Deferio / Keys to the Shop

Generosity should be our default setting in the hospitality business. It is a people-based industry after all and relationships are at the heart of everything we do. That said, there is a very real need for intentionality in the midst of those relational dynamics. As we seek to treat people right and also reward our customers and staff, our good intentions may be met with less than good results if they lack structure.

Inconsistency is probably the number one frustration people have with their service experiences and when we have a good idea or intention with an single act of generosity or a feature of our business meant to display generosity, we are implying to people that it will be functional, consistent, and that we have put int he work and due diligence to make it so.

Example 1: Say you offer a BOGO special for roasted coffee and you fail to inform all the staff of the deal. Or you forget to enter into the POS the appropriate codes and buttons needed for the staff to ring customers out. Through a lack of planning and structure you have turned what should have been a positive experience into a frustrating one for both the barista and customer.

Example 2: Consider also you want to add regular staff meetings for the purpose of encouraging your team and gathering feedback from them. Everyone is excited to have their voice heard and it goes well for a bit, but after a few weeks, fizzles out. You got busy and it feel through the cracks. We chalk these things up to “life” but really it is a lack of structure and planning that causes things to fall apart. As much as we want staff buy-in to our programs, vision, and mission, we must ask ourselves, what should we use as a measure of own buy-in? I believe we should measure our buy-in through commitment coupled with intentionality, planning, and prioritization.

So the degree to which we are setting up our team and our customers for success through these supporting structures, is the degree to which we are bought-in and showing a professional level of care that is needed in all aspects of service based businesses where we want to build up trust with the people we serve and serve with.

My encouragement to you today is that you take a look at how you create and execute your ideas. When you set up the structures around your acts of generosity, you set up everyone for success!

-Chris

 

Contact me at : Chris@keystotheshop.com

Related Episodes:

 

 

Getting out of Work

By Chris Deferio / Keys to the Shop

 

Today, more than ever, we are consumed by hacks, shortcuts, tips and advice to make our lives easier. When it comes to running a coffee shop and being a leader this might be helpful when dealing with things, but not necessarily helpful when dealing with people.

I recently aired a Shift Break on the way we tend to unfairly prioritize and hold up as an example baristas that learn quick and make our lives easier, all the while looking at baristas who take longer to learn the same things with contempt because they make more work for us. We think more work in training is a sign we hired wrong and subconsciously are nurturing a resentment toward people who require work. In reality…that is most people. They require work.

The quest for optimization is good in its proper place but taken too far and we start to falsely think “If it is efficient it is easy”. Instead we should seek optimization for the sake of specificity and aiming at the right things. Which things are we going to work hard on? not, “How can I make all hard things easy.”

The attitude of getting out of work creates an inattention to the lessons learned in hard work. One of which is discovering your own optimization tools and specific needs based on first hand experience. We miss out on the rewards of hard work and inconvenient tasks when we are obsessed with escaping them.

In the cafe there are many opportunities to develop maturity, even if you are older, in the role you occupy. When we seek to run away from hard work by constantly search ing for hacks and shortcuts we inhibit our ability to effectively lead and will artificially inflate our accomplishments. On the back of this, we will not be able to operate the business well because we did not collect lessons, we collected tools and tricks. When hard times come we will dive deeper into the tools and tricks and not take an honest look at ourselves and the core structures that may be lacking.

So my encouragement to you is that you would reject the idea that the difficulties that come with leading  and developing people are aberrations in your business that can be vanquished with the right formula, tip, or trick.

Seek to embrace the work of leading, training, and coaching people as an exciting and ever-present part of the job you are meant to do and let the lessons in that work create a more healthy dynamic that prioritizes good work over the subconscious drive to avoid it.

-Chris

 

Contact me at : Chris@keystotheshop.com

Related Episodes:

 

4 Steps to Investing in Affirmation

By Chris Deferio / Keys to the Shop

 

The cafe is a high pressure environment and as we go about our work, the hunt for incongruities, mistakes that need correction, and oppotunities to coach and guide people are usually at the top of our minds. The opportunities for affirmation abound, but are buried amidst the meetings, texts, and emails all designed to offer correction.

Appropriately enough, when we think of ways to get results, we don’t seem to have a very high opinion of positive reinforcement even though people often respond far more to meaningful affirmation in the workplace.

If you want to create a different cutlure in your business I have highlighted 4 steps you can take to make it a reality. Please also refer to the links to related podcast episodes below for more thoughts on affirmation.

1. Be present where the work is done

I am always suprised at how little some owners make it to the floor to take in what is actually happening. After all, what happens in the shop is the most critical part of your business. It is the experience. Both of the barista and the customer that either drives success or erodes success.

Being present does not mean getting involved in everyting. It simply means you are there enough in an observational capacity, doing some work over a coffee, to see the areas tha need work, but also the areas that need affirmation and positive reinforcement. Correcting and encouraging based on hear-say is pretty ineffective

3. Give affirmation seperately from critique

When giving positive reiforcement it is hard to stop ourselves from sneaking in some corrections or “coaching”. Nobody will latch on to the positive comments when paired with a critique. Truth is we probably interact so little that when we do we want to just “get it all out there”. We should be communicating enough that we feel confident that whatever critue we do have will be addressed soon and seperately. Keep it light hearted, be sincrere, make it a simple, uncomplicated compliment and then leave it alone. Let it stand on its own merit. This all may feel awkward but given how practiced we are in critque and how atrophied our encourgent muscles are, that is to be expected.

4. Schedule time for specific positivity 

You are busy. We get it. The important things need to make it into your schedule or there is a risk of them not getting done. As crass as “scheduling affirmation” sounds, it is sometimes a necessary first step to making it a priority, then a habit, and finally a natural occurrence. Look at the week and see where there are times you will be in the presence of each of your baristas and then put it on the schedule. Plan affirmation until it is a cultural norm. In your affirmations, dont jsut say “great job” or “you’re kiling it!” those are shallow and void of meaning and usually are the default of a manager who has nothing else to say. If you cannot pay a specific compliment, you are not paying attention.

In the end this all boils down to having faith in the power of affirmation to drive change. We will need to constantly assess the blind faith we put in critique and bolster the faith we put in positive reinforcement if we want to have a thriving and healthy business and work culture.

 

Related Episodes:

Self-Awareness and Honesty

By Chris Deferio / Keys to the Shop

 

In recent interviews I got to talk about self-awareness and have been stewing on the concept for a bit. Self-awareness is not just a personal development side project. It is literally the difference between whether your business is steeped in life or steeped in death.

If I don’t know myself then I will be unaware of my impact on others around me. When the result of that impact comes to fruition I will look for the cause in every other place besides where it came from. Me.

This is where blame come in. We either blame a person, a system, or just life itself. The answer is often much more simple than what we would like to believe. We like to believe the answers to problems we have are complex and outside ourselves, then at least we can be forgiven for not solving it or seeing it before it needed to be solved. We are victims in this narrative. Victims of the hardships of business.

The truth may just be that we are fooling ourselves to avoid confronting ourselves.

This is the first place we should go. How did I facilitate this? How did I catalyze this? What can I do to change it? It reminds me of a Shift Break I did called “My Favorite Interview Question”. The question I ask is, “In what ways did you contribute to the dysfunctions in your last job?” Simple enough. It’s designed to get you to show how self-aware you are. I have received responses that range from taking full responsibility – to throwing others under the bus. Needless to say if you are not used to practicing a mindset that first looks in the mirror, then it is hard to answer this question without reverting to the old standby excuses.

As leaders, we are looked upon to set an example in words and actions. We would all agree that self-awareness, honesty, and taking ownership are things we want to see from people we lead. Certainly they need to be first true of us.

Let’s make a habit of regularly checking in on ourselves to make sure we are practicing what we preach. The life of our business depends on it.

-Chris

 

Listen to the latest Shift Break and related episodes on self-awareness:

If you want the truly level-up your batch brew then you absolutely need to check out the Ground Control Cyclops Brewer ! Please visit our friends over at: www.vogacoffee.com for more information

You can contact me at : Chris@keystotheshop.com

 

Good Communication is “For Here”

By Chris Deferio / Keys to the Shop

“The single biggest problem in communication is the illusion that it has taken place.” – George Bernard Shaw

This sentiment is, for me, at the heart of what plagues most coffee shops and holds us back from being as excellent as we can be in the retail space. In the latest Shift Break we discussed the idea of communication before the performance review as being the key to having a great review. Most of the time we are holding back our communication and the reason tends to be convenience.

We do spend a good deal of time upfront communicating a message to new hires about policies, procedures, information about the company history, the menu etc. But, if we are honest, we do it with the idea lurking somewhere in the back of our head that, if done right, we only need to do it once.

In some ways we engineer our communication more like a to-go cup than a ceramic. The former is designed to be used once and thrown away. The later is designed to be trusted and used again and again.

If we default to random and infrequent communications born from desperation, fire fighting, or special occasions we will tend to also convince ourselves that it is sufficient and we ignore the myriad of opportunities we have on a daily basis to communicate with our staff our feedback, direction, affirmation, vision, and information.

In the Shift Break episode I discussed how nothing in the performance review should be a surprise. You should have been having robust discussions and frequent, substantive talks with your staff all along the way. This gives a sense of stability to you and especially to them. If your culture is built on this, people will begin to extend the same kind of  trust to you and the company that they do in a ceramic mug vs a to-go cup. Ceramic is engineered to be permanent, trusted, dependable, and substantial. A paper  to-go cup only really lasts for 1-2 drinks. It is a convenience product that creates waste and has in-built obsolescence. I can think of no better way to describe how many shops treat communication than that…A waste, lacking substance, built to throw away, and ultimately damaging to sustainability.

My encouragement to you is to take a look at how you currently communicate. Take inventory of the what, when, where, when, and who. If you are like most busy business owners, it may look pretty random and rough. That’s ok. The first step is to loo at it in the clear light or reality. The next step is to create a dependable, substantive, and regular system for your communication that in turn creates a culture built on clear expectations and trust.

Good communication should always be “For here”.

 

-Chris

 

Listen to the latest Shift Break and related episodes on communication:

If you want the truly level-up your batch brew then you absolutely need to check out the Ground Control Cyclops Brewer ! Please visit our friends over at: www.vogacoffee.com for more information

You can contact me at : Chris@keystotheshop.com

 

Wholesale Entitlement Syndrome

By Chris Deferio / Keys to the Shop

 

I just released a Shift Break discussing the concept of poaching employees from other shops. The definition of poaching is basically that you, as an owner or manager, enter a business and initiate an offer to a current employee to come work for you.

So basically the sleaziest thing you could do.

The premise was basically – don’t do that! But what if you are the one who has had competitors poach from your business? Take it a step further. What if the person doing it was a wholesale customer of yours? Weird right? Well I received an email from a listener describing this exact same scenario and how she eventually kicked this person out and told them off. Good. The question I am left with is, what could possess, what I assume is a normal person, to do something so obviously over the line?

The answer is entitlement.

In my mind, if this were a competitor, it would not have been as easy for them to brazenly break this unwritten rule. However, when you learn it is a client, it all starts to make sense. I have seen this time and again where wholesale clients view the roastery as if it were their own personal Santa Claus. A bottomless bag of toys, resources, service, and …patience. I think we all know this is more common than we’d like to admit and this individual, by dint of association, probably thought that what was theirs was his, including staff!

What drives this attitude is equal parts desperation and laziness. Desperation to find resolution to a problem they are having with staff, machines, consistency, traffic etc. This drives them to reach out almost immediately to their roaster who, in their most hopeful of minds, will have the answer that will save  them from their problem. Now, there is nothing wrong with reaching out, but there is a fine line between seeking guidance and resource, and having unreasonable expectations.  When the underlying attitude is that the key to their success rests in their wholesale providers hands and they abdicate their responsibility to create solutions for their own business, then it becomes unhealthy. Then we see behavior as described above.

Roasters are partially to blame because in an effort to win clients they want to offer more than their competitor and often stray into the realm of over-promising and inevitably under-delivering which helps create more entitlement.

We can combat this by drawing clear boundaries with our wholesale partners and communicating what kind of reasonable expectations they can have as a result of choosing our coffee. In the ensuing months, it is up to us to reinforce this understanding by, say, not answering calls at 1:30am. Or by reminding them of when their orders need to be submitted by for on-time delivery. If you don’t enforce boundaries you will be unwittingly enabling entitlement.

If you find yourself in the position of being the customer of a wholesale provider, please examine how much faith you put in them to make you successful vs how much ownership you take on yourself. You may be surprised to find yourself slipping into an entitlement mentality.

Let’s take steps to communicate and be clear about reasonable service, and reasonable boundaries. By tending to this, we will cultivate a stronger and longer lasting relationship.

-Chris

If you want the truly level-up your batch brew then you absolutely need to check out the Ground Control Cyclops Brewer ! Please visit our friends over at: www.vogacoffee.com for more information

You can contact me at : Chris@keystotheshop.com

Soul Searching in the New Landscape of Retail

By Chris Deferio / Keys to the Shop

 

The last 7 months have proven one thing. We are more than what we do.

Our very means of expression and provision has been stripped from us and we are now left to pick up the pieces and try to reassemble everything from processes, menus, staff, schedules, and every other component that collectively creates the whole of our coffee shops.

In recent interviews related to COVID I heard a lot about this being an opportunity for owners to do soul searching and that with the intent of fortifying the values that drive us and inspire all the work it takes to create a great coffee retail experience. It is the a=classic question coined by Author and Speaker Simon Sinek, What is our “Why” ?

For so many of us the why seemed pretty straight forward when we first started. In fact we might have just assumed that we had one because of the excitement of beginning the journey and seeing it grow. Thing is though, as things grow, what was enough to keep them at the start, needs to change or be expanded to sustain it. In other words, our “Why” needs to grow with the business and we even need to be open to it changing a bit as the business shows us the realities that we could only speculate about before the shop was open.

Armed with the benefit of experience and history, we own it to ourselves to reexamine our motivations and values. We owe it also to our customers and all the people who have a stake in the success of our shop helping stabilize a shaky supply chain. When we are clear on the deep er values and motivations then we are clear about our goals and our ability to be resilient, innovative, and collaborative in service to those goals. When we are just plugging along and have nothing driving us from within, the drudgery becomes overwhelming and, like a can that is easily crushed when empty, we succumb to the external weight for lack of fullness and resilience from within.

My encouragement to you toady is also a reminder to myself. Take time to refine, scale, and adjust your “why”. Search your soul and be open to what you discover and to what you want from your business as well as the needs of the community that has grown around it. For a lot of people this will be a time of tectonic shifts in their business model, for others they will need to adjust some small things that end up making a big difference down the road.

In either case, we must use this time as an opportunity to build and fortify our foundations and create a habit of tending to them into the future.

-Chris

If you want the truly level-up your batch brew then you absolutely need to check out the Ground Control Cyclops Brewer ! Please visit our friends over at: www.vogacoffee.com for more information

You can contact me at : Chris@keystotheshop.com

 

Professionalize, Specialize, Expand—How to Build Your Reputation and Career, No Matter What Your Role

By Bruce Tulgan

If you only work hard, you’ll only get overcommitted, resentful, tired, and under siege. That’s no way to be a go-to person. So, you’d better work smart:

  • First, professionalize whatever you do. Whatever your job is, make sure you do it really, really well. Some organizations have effective, timely training to prepare you—and good systems and tools to support you—for every task, responsibility, and project you might undertake as part of your job. If your employer does not, then you’d better create your own.
  • Second, specialize in whatever you do best. That means focusing as much of your work time as possible doing the things you already do really well. That’s why, ironically, there is actually a lot of wisdom hidden in “That’s not my job”—despite the phrase’s bad reputation. Know what specialties you want to be known for. The more work you do in your specialties, the better your outcomes. Every minute you spend on the things you do very well adds more value than a minute spent on something that is not your specialty.
    • Third, keep expanding your repertoire. Sometimes, as Petra advised Michelle, it’s wise to consider doing the thing that’s “not my job.” After all, you don’t want to specialize so much that you get stuck in a pigeonhole. So be on the lookout for opportunities to add a new specialty.

Let’s take these one at a time.

Three Keys to Professionalization

To professionalize any task, responsibility, or project, do these three things:

  1. Identify, study, and follow the proven best practices in your field and in your organization. Turn them into standard operating procedures.
  2. Bank and reuse repeatable solutions, rather than reinventing the wheel every time. These are the solutions to recurring problems that naturally emerge when you regularly use your standard operating procedures.
  3. Use whatever job aids you can find—such as work instructions, checklists, templates, and prior work products. These are the things that will help you systematically follow those best practices and use those repeatable solutions. Once you get comfortable with the basics, build some job aids of your own.

Specialize in Whatever You Do Best

Put a laser focus on what you do best.

Do you have a specialty? What do you do best? What are those tasks, responsibilities, or projects that are really in your wheelhouse? This is the work where you know just what to do and just how to do it, and what might go wrong and how, usually, to avoid it. You also know on a deep level what it takes, in the microcosm of your specialty, to ask others to “help me help you help me.” You know how to optimize your productive capacity, maximize your impact, and dramatically increase the ROI on your work.

What’s more, you are pretty certain that every minute you spend on one of your specialties, you will add more value, better and faster, than someone who doesn’t have your specialty—or than you would by spending any particular minute doing some- thing that is not one of your specialties. That’s true no matter what your job is.

If you are a specialist, you also know how to use your standard operating procedures, repeatable solutions, job aids, and prior successful outcomes in order to teach the colleagues with whom you collaborate enough about what you do to help them help you help them. Meanwhile, do not fall into the trap of being great at just the aspects of the job you like and slacking on the aspects you don’t like or consider ancillary.

Keep Expanding Your Repertoire Even When “That” Is Not Your Job

Despite all the advantages of adding to your repertoire, you still need to choose very carefully before saying yes or no to a new task, responsibility, or project.

Sometimes it really shouldn’t be your job. Not all opportunities are equally promising. The least promising fall into two main categories:

  • The wild-goose chase. These are fruitless tasks that are often time consuming and sometimes difficult, time wasters that are usually not even much fun. Keep your eyes peeled for the wild-goose chase and do whatever you can to avoid it.One shortcut might be the reputation of the asker. Has this person wasted your time before? Or that of others? Still, prejudging a colleague’s requests based on reputation or even your own experience with them might get you a reputation for being uncooperative or cliquish (as in, “I won’t work with certain people”). And you might miss out on a great opportunity.The number-one common denominator of the wild-goose chase is the half-baked ask: if the request comes in early and then gets changed over and over, then you are likely to do a lot of work without accomplishing much.
  • You are really the wrong person for this task: In some cases, it would be ridiculous for you to try to do the task yourself. But the great thing about go-to-ism is that, increasingly, if you are a go-to person with real influence, then you have a lot of good customers, and you know where to find go-to people or potential people you can nurture. You know who’s who and where to find them, so you can make the introduction and be the connector, which by itself is a service.

Sometimes maybe it should be your job. What about times when, yes, you’d probably do well to decide that something seemingly outside your job actually should be part of your job? There are three primary instances:

  1. Somebody’s got to do it—and it might as well be you (at least sometimes). I’m not talking here about tasks ancillary to your primary responsibility but still part of your job, like the heavy machine operators’ safety checks and shift handoff checklists, or the neonatal surgeon who washes her own hands.

I’m talking about the tasks that come up regularly or every so often that belong to no one, but somebody’s got to do it—one-off errands. The reasons to sometimes do the occasional one-off errands: good workplace citizenship, teamwork, humility, and sacrifice. And don’t forget relationship ROI. People notice, and they appreciate and remember it. For example:

  • Not repairing equipment, but knowing how to troubleshoot common problems
  • Not being the manager, but bringing in the mail or opening a box of supplies when you see them
  • Not being a trainer, but taking the time to teach a colleague how to do something new or better

Do be careful: you do not want to become that would-be go-to person who jumps at every chance.

  1. The job is a close cousin to your specialty. These are often the most natural and easy opportunities to add to your repertoire. These are the jobs that are usually a good fit with your other responsibilities and relatively easy to add to your repertoire of specialties. It makes sense to do them.
  2. The job presents a brand-new opportunity to truly expand your repertoire—or even take on an additional career or change careers. It’s always a good idea to branch out and build new knowledge, skills, wisdom, relationships, experiences, best practices, tools, work products, and repeatable solutions.Mastering brand-new specialties is how you truly diversify your opportunities to add value. Some new specialties are easier to add than others. Most require some amount of up-to-speed training. Some require going back to school.

Working Smart—And Even Smarter

As you build each set of best practices, repeatable solutions, and job aids, you are building your repertoire of services and products—your specialties.

The skills you have the most experience with are those you are likely to do the fastest and best. These are the skills and services you’ve had a chance to road test. These are your specialties, the ones you want to be known for as you build your brand as a go-to person.

When your repeatable solutions become the established solutions, and you are clearly happy to see them proliferate, you will find yourself becoming a de facto leader of an organic team forming around you and your repertoire. That’s a good thing for your superiors to notice: it’s often the path to a swifter promotion and more official authority.

This is an adapted excerpt from Bruce Tulgan’s new book The Art of Being Indispensable at Work, due for release July 21, 2020 from Harvard Business Review Press and available for pre-order now from all major booksellers, including:

Bruce Tulgan is the best-selling author of It’s Okay to Be the Boss and the CEO of RainmakerThinking, the management research, consulting and training firm he founded in 1993. All of his work is based on 27 years of intensive workplace interviews and has been featured in thousands of news stories around the world. You can follow Bruce on Twitter @BruceTulgan or visit his website at rainmakerthinking.com.

Creative Avoidance : Thoughts on Long-game Management

7/3/2020

It is easy for me to chase peace in the moment in order to avoid temporary pain. I mean, I am really good at fooling myself, lying to myself that if I don’t address it, it will go away. If I avoid talking to that one employee about their service level at the POS then maybe the situation will work itself out. They know the standard and if I just give them space maybe they will self-correct? I can go on and on.

We are never more creative than when we are trying to avoid responsibility that involved awkwardness, pain, or tension. The truth though is that the most valuable things are on the otherwise of pain. The deepest friendships are the ones that have a history of conflict than leads to resolution. It is a testing of values and dedication.

I will always doubt your commitment to me if you are never willing to have a hard conversation. I know myself well enough to know my own B.S. and when someone calls me on it, though I may be defensive, I am grateful.

Same is true of staff in a coffee shop.

When you take the time to lean into the relationship and show that you have faith in the strength of that relationship and trust in them to be able to handle it, though it seems unpleasant in the moment, it creates a strength that cannot be created apart from resistance.

Let’s look to this time in our businesses as an early New Years resolution. Let’s resolve to care enough to confront and coach. Let’s show that we our staff and their development seriously. Let’s be open to others doing the same for us. Yes I said, “for” not “to”

Just like Danny Meyer asserts in his foundational book on hospitality “Setting the Table”, Hospitality is not done “to” the customer, but “for” them. It shows in its practice that we are on their side.

So let’s adopt a long term management mindset and be there for the benefit of our staff, no matter how if feels in the moment.

-Chris Deferio

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CHRIS@KEYSTOTHESHOP.COM

 

 

Who we are and What we do 

6/30/2020

Work in a cafe is not easy. There is a never ending string of mental and emotional hurdles that must be dealt with in a way that is not normal to the average social experience. When choosing to enter the hospitality industry, not many of us are prepared for this pressure and we immediately grasp for the nearest thing that will get us through. For some this looks like complaining and gossiping, for others it looks like completely detaching yourself and becoming robotic, what ever defense mechanism we choose to help us get through the day, we are just treating symptoms of a deeper issue that won’t get resolved unless we go on the offensive.

The latest episode of Shift Break discussed an approach to elevating our service standards that is not very widely discussed.

You could call it wholistic in that we are not making distinctions between who you are and what you do. In other words, we are who we are at work, just like in life. The only difference is that, at work, we tend to put on a mask that is crafted to pull up the slack in what we perceive as a lack in our own capacity to handle the job.

If we want to change how we show up at work then we need to start paying attention to how we  show up in life outside of work.

Here is an example:

Say I want to improve my ability to engage in small talk while in bar but usually I feel awkward and let opportunities slip by me. If I try to overcome this inhibition only at work it will take a while because my efforts are limited to only when I am clocked in. If I want to move the needle on this then it needs to be something I practice at work AND outside of work. I will strike up conversation in the store, at the table, on public transit etc. Eventually I will develop the habit and bring it into work with me.

You can do this with almost anything you want to improve. Cleanliness, attention to detail, pre-emptive service, memory, etc.

In order to be better at work, we need to be better in life because who we are will either give us momentum in the cafe, or it will drive us to burn out from the burden of  hiding who we are.

Listen again:

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