596: 7 Reasons Why You Have High Turnover

Chris DeferioPodcast

Employee turnover in specialty coffee shops is the most talked about and difficult issue deal with, it has been for a long time. There are many causes for high turnover and sadly owners and managers frequently try to lower turnover with methods that are not effective. This is mostly because the cause specific to your shop has not yet been …

SHIFT BREAK: Making Leadership A Real Process

Chris DeferioPodcast

Leadership and management are things we talk a lot about, but what does it take to actually make them a real process in the cafe? Most of what is in a job description is either unreasonable and poorly though through, or it is good but there is no real commitment from owners to see that it takes place. Today on …

595: Founder Friday | Advocating for Independent coffee shops w/ Peter Dore-Smith of Kaffeine London UK

Chris DeferioPodcast

Creating an excellent cafe experience is a work of commitment and dedication to caring for both the staff and the community that you serve. The coffee shop functions as a cornerstone of a healthy social structure in any city and advocating for it needs to sometimes go beyond the operations of the shop itself but extend into action taken to …

ROR #40 w/ Chris Johnson of Purefi Coffee Roasters, Spring Texas : Roasting Excellent Coffee With Purpose OT

Chris DeferioPodcast

Roasting and brewing creates opportunity for mentorship and relationships that last longer than the sensory experience of the cup. Seriously pursuing technical excellence is a part of securing this opportunity and today’s guest has been on a journey to bring both to the table. On this Rate of Rise we are talking with Purefi Coffee Roasters, Chris Johnson! Chris is …

594: Encore : Don’t Get Stuck: Retraining Staff on New Standards

Chris DeferioPodcast

It is easy to become stuck in the ways that you first learned to do things. Especially if those ways have brought some degree of success. We take comfort in the familiar to the degree that even if it is not working, we will protect the known dysfunction rather than embracing something new better, but not known. Not to mention …

SHIFT BREAK: Cupping is Overrated

Chris DeferioPodcast

I love cupping coffee. It is a great way to assess a coffee and learn how to identify defects, attributes, and nuances that allow you to make decisions about buying coffee and how to maintain consistency in roasting. But the issue we have in a lot of coffee is that cupping, a practice designed for the above scenarios, has been …

593: Why You Should Not Manage Gen Z

Chris DeferioPodcast

The favorite past time of many an owner is to gripe about their younger Gen Z staff. Before them it was millennials. Before them it was Gen X, before them…well, you get the idea. For as long as coffee shops have hired employees, leaders have found it challenging to lead and manage a younger work force and the reason given …

SHIFT BREAK! Become Immune to Fear-Based Coffee Marketing

Chris DeferioPodcast

“Don’t get left behind!” It feels like every post trying to sell you on a product relies on fear in order to make the sale. The idea of marketing to “pain points” as they say in the biz, is not entirely wrong since we do in-fact want to provide solutions for real needs. But where things go a step too …

592: The Criteria For The World’s Best Coffee Shop

Chris DeferioPodcast

Ranking the best coffee shops in the world is a task that sounds like a neat idea! That is until you realize the sheer impossibility of such a task not to mention the cognitive dissonance required to pretend like the results of such a ranking are in any way definitive  or substantive. The world of coffee shops thrives on professional …