Too Much Coffee

Aloha!

Maybe some of you can donate their thoughts, it will be highly appreciated:
Background:
I have some experience with hiring employees, but only based on my advertising agency
If I'm going to hire employees to work as baristas, I have two thoughts:

1) I hire someone who hasn't been a barista before, so that I can train them my quality standards. So I don't have to be afraid, that some ex-Starbucks or snobbish ex-waiter relapses into his old habits after a while or when not monitored, like "refrothing-frothed milk", or other rituals they have been used to.

2) or I DO hire a professional barista and some newbies, so that the barista makes things hum at the beginning.

What do you think, or what experiences have you made in your coffee shop?

And are there some special questions I should ask an applicant at the interview, besides the common ones? Something that immediatly proofs something special? If there are baristas in this group - what would you ask a possible new colleague?

Thanks for your patience to read this and maybe answer it

Curious Joey

PS.: If everything works out as planned, I will need some good employees from May/June for full and part time work in Vienna. (lure, lure )

PPS.: I hope you are not jealous if I post this question at CG, too, but I would like to have as many opinions as possible. Not that I don't trust yours, but this is still a small group, and I think some questions are universal

No probs about the dual posting Joey. Maybe you could tell them you posted here too? Seriously!

Personally I would consider the experienced Barista option first, but I would ask lots of questions about his/her opinions regarding espresso as a quality product. If the answers don't seem right, seem contrived or simply don't align with your own views then it's plan B.

phil wrote:...Maybe you could tell them you posted here too? Seriously!

I did! SHouldn't I?
He, he, no - just kidding.

Or do you want me to? Maybe I'm slow on the uptake, but I thought this is a site just for Europe, and only for invited guests...btw, did you choose a possibility to tell people who find this forum, want to choin it, but don't fit - why they don't get to be members? Or do you open the site for everyone?
Sorry, I'm not updated...and I guess a little confused today

Read ya
Joey

PS.: thanks for the hints about the barista interview

Hi Joey

It's like this. TMC is only for invited friends. However, sometimes we're not going to know in advance who those friends will be. So far, we've only grown the membership by contacting people and inviting them. However, as another way forward, we have been discussing the idea of letting people know we're here and maybe some of them will ask to join. At that point we can look at who they are and decide whether we like them!

So I was serious about the CG referral. What I meant was, you posted "Oh and I hope you don't mind but I posted on CG too". What I have in mind is you saying "Oh, and I also posted this question on TooMuchCoffee.com". The idea being that the European members think "so what's this TooMuchCoffee.com all about, then?"

I've been discussing this sort of recruitment with Neku & Eeffoc. I've done something similar on CG and a.c by asking for extra people for the cupping course we're running. I haven't directly said that it's TMC that's organising the course, but I'm hoping that by increasing our visibility some people we might like will decide they want to join, saving us the trouble of hunting them down like we did with you.

Sorry, have I made sense?

Likewise, I have added a 'toomuchcoffee.com' signature to my a.c posts. I'm not sure these count as links, but if they do, it should increase our Google visibility as well. I also added it to my CG signature, for the same reason. In fact, we should start asking people to link to us.

Sorry, joey: about the baristi. If you can find a good, experienced one, of course you hire him. If not, be sure to train those newbies well!

OK, understood! I'll add the recommendation to my CG post. If my coffeeshop will be open and have a teriffic homepage, of course, your link will be on it, too. But that still takes a while, snif. At least 5-6 months.
So I keep talking about your page to coffee friends.
Have a nice day!
Joey

Re links to us : Eeffoc will be doing that (maybe in return for a link via our advertising block function) and I intend to ask Carolyn for a similar quid pro quo.