C'mon, it's near impossible to follow BBR to the letter when you're the only one on bar with 15+ drinks in your lineup.
Ever notice the peeps who always follow routine constantly get overwhelmed with drinks and need help because they're too busy "connecting"? In a perfect setting, we'd have bar support. BBR was implemented so that bar support kicks in with 6+ drinks. I should be able to use both machines if I'm not getting any help. I can pound orders out 3x faster that way.
Rawr.
^ GOOD SIR WE ARE IN AGREEMENT
Yerp. My store isn't nearly staffed enough to follow BRR to a tee. If it's a rush you're damn right I'll use both bars, work on four drinks at a time, and blend two of the same frappuccino together. I'll pump out drinks quick and I'll connect as much as I can. Sorry but I have drinks to make.
^ Everything you said. I can connect better when not following it to the letter. I won't steam milk twice or use a pitcher twice without rinsing it first, but I will steam two tall lattes together or blend two talls as well. I will for sure pull two shots together for two talls and most definitely steam on both bars at the same time.
I got in trouble for using both bars because apparently it sets a bad example for new hires who are shadowing me. Wtf? I was never briefed on having anyone shadow me.
it's stupid but I'm over it. I'm not on bar enough to care anymore and I don't care if other baristas are doing it or not on my shift, I never "coach" them about it. on the rare shift when I am a barista and they put me on bar I kind of follow it but mainly just do what I want.
It's even worse when people assume you're following BRR to a tee and come over to bar support you when you get EXACTLY 7 drinks. Then their idea of support is to slowly take over until there's honestly no need for you to even be on bar anymore because they're doing such a damn good job "supporting".
Ahhh! That's what my oaf of a SM does! He'll see that I have 5-6 drinks on bar, then he'll come over and get in the way until the rush dies down. I hate it SO MUCH.
All of the morning ladies at my store have been there for like 4+ years will write cups for the morning rush line and get up and walk away. It drives me crazy. Needless to say when I started working mornings I learned my own version of BRR reeaaal fast.
The only moment the routine fails is when you're supposed to implement "connection" during a rush. Otherwise, if you learn to work the routine as written into your own style of barring, you'll find a way to be efficient and quick while still following guidelines. But yeah, it's silly to try to talk up one customer about how the **** the weather's like during rush.
I've found that the best way to "connect" in those busy moments is to put on a bit of a show with your partner and loudly exchange jokes. Creates a nice atmosphere, and all the customers, who are surely staring, find themselves pleased and entertained. Takes a lot of chemistry though.
Do you know any good barista jokes? My sense of humor is broken from work and all that comes out is this?
Q. What did one barista say to the other barista?
A. 'Can you make some frap roast? I'm pumpin blanks here.'
Q. Then what did the other barista say?
A. 'Eff no; you make it. I just got done cleaning the drains.'
(baristas, in unison): 'Let's go take a 25-minute 10 and smoke American Spirits.'
I HATE HATE HATE it 99% of the time when someone comes to 'assist.' Starting to pull shots for drinks I haven't steamed milk for yet, moving cups to the top or beside machines so I lose the queue or worse, miss drinks, helpfully taking away and rinsing the pitcher of perfect foam that was waiting for the quad shots to pull... and then they're all like boy, you can't keep **** straight, it's a good thing I'm helping!!! Yes. Helping. Oy. Or the very best thing, standing there and picking up all the cups, studying them intensely, and then putting them back down with the markings facing away from me. Thaaaannks.
If you want to be actually helpful, how about you make one of the waiting frappuccinos or rinse out the tea shaker? I don't need your 'help' getting in the way of my flow, bro.
Yeah that's why the routine asks for support solely to do that, not to double bar. This entails pumping syrups, pouring out the milk, and a few other things I can't remember. Double barring often compromise's the original barista on bar's routine and just gets **** annoying if you're next to someone who doesn't know how to cooperate.
Fortunately though, with it being summer, the floating barista just takes hot or cold bar instead of standing with you side by side on a hot bar, like in the fall/winter. Albeit my manager likes to slip onto hot bar and then stand there when those drinks are done, or leave teas scattered and undone in a line of frappuccinos.
I've been helping out at my old store lately (where they don't give a **** about brr), so luckily, any rushes that have occurred have been handled by myself on both bars.
But this past spring semester, we got rushes every saturday morning/afternoon because of the sports events of the neighboring college, right as BRR was being introduced to our store. Sigh. Fortunately, I was able to quickly come up with a way to "cheat" the system. While you're steaming milk and pouring the shot(s) for your one drink (sigh), look down the line and prep the milks for as many as you can that are in line, making sure to keep the pitchers in some kind of order so your bar support can figure out which milk to steam next. The line goes down much faster and you still have time to talk to customers/solve problems/make 1,000 waters.
This method, of course, only works if your shift or SOMEONE is rinsing pitchers for you. If not, you will have to stop making drinks for a minute or so and clean all of the pitchers once you run out, slowly driving you mad. But hey, if your SM is demanding that you implement BRR, at least this method works better than doing everything one at a time.
^ At my store we were taught that filling pitchers with the milk and putting them in a line just as you described was part of B2R. It is the one and only thing we are supposed to do while waiting for milk to steam. It's annoying because sometimes you only have a couple of different milks and you could totally be pumping syrups, but this "faster" method keeps you planted having a conversation!!! While on the floor we can talk with partners as long as we are cleaning and stocking, so why do they figure we can't work and connect with customers? I wish the people telling us how to better do our job where people who'd actually done our job and done it better!
@SIGHren ... I smoke American Spirits..
I've given up on the BB. F it.
I have to pretend to do it when the bossman is around. Otherwise, I just don't. Honestly, what difference does the order of throwing crap in a blender make? None whatsoever, or at the very least, none that a customer can really tell. So long as the measurements for the milk+frappyroast are correct, I don't see the effing point. It's just like being disallowed from using both bars. ..what's the point of having two twenty-thousand plus dollar machines if I'm only only using one?
^ Amen!
@senor: They all do. ;-)
I really do feel like if I'm the only person making drinks during a rush, I'm not necessarily great at juggling a sequence of colds/hots...
We've discussed elsewhere how very long the oven minute is, and how you can accomplish so much while a sandwich is toasting. However, the cold bevs seem to take both hands in a way that the espresso drinks don't, and a simple BTL takes enough steps/movement that I could've made 3 hot drinks by the time I tea, lemonade, classic, ice, shake, decant -- but I don't want to mess up the queue and anger customers who'd waited longer.
So I do very much appreciate bar support IF they grab even one cold beverage and get it started. I just think we need to put both blender pitchers out so you don't have to rinse out the blender before you can even start on the next blended drink.
I think it's moronic for 'bar support' to come and 'help' with your hot drinks when you're up to your eyeballs already and churning them out without any problems. Make the cold drinks, you d-bag.
I've been doing it lately because the new boss is being very crazy about it. I already heard that she already had someone written up in one of the stores for not steaming milk right. [wtf] I think I'm getting it down good, though I am still a bit confused when it comes to the iced drinks. The new DM came today and gave me two test drinks and thankfully they were easy ones so I passed. Yay. Buuuut I still don't like this BRR thing...I don't understand why I can't use the two machines if I have 40 cups and no one to pass me pitchers and rinse my dirty ones. If I have a white mocha and then a solo espresso next, why can't I use the other bar, why why why...
Forget that connecting thing. I just make the drinks and hand them out. This b^tchy shift I work with told me the other day that I need to thank the customers but I just don't really like to because 1. It's fake, everyone knows it too and 2. Most people s.natch [I can't write s.natch??] their drinks away from me and don't say anything back.
Senor, I smoke Spirits as well. If we ever have our meetup I'll buy you a pack for being such a gent!
@Quackers - My manager tried to force me to say "Thank you" once. I ignored her when she did, which was kind insubordinate of me. But I was new at the time, and felt just like you did. I'm not going to implement sincerity when I have none to provide at that moment.
Eventually though, I got to the point where I could genuinely add a "Thank you, have a good day/night" to each drink I made. It comes naturally as you untie the knots of your drink making frustrations.
Although people will still ignore me or **** the drinks as you say they do. In these cases, I loudly follow "Have a good day" with "Or not. You just go ahead and do that. Yeah who cares right" or whatever improvised ramble that follows "or not". Totally makes me feel better.
I've been working for about a month now and no one has said anything to me about what BBR is or how to do it... sooo wth is it? lol
Full-bodied, the turquoise blue pack? I don't do lights, lololo. I've wanted to try their others but I never have the cash to experiment. These frickin' things are expensive. That being said, I have an e-cigarette lying around somewhere for when I uh, start to want to actually attempt to try to quit. My motto is, as soon as I'm out of Starbucks, I won't need to smoke anymore.
And, if we ever have a HatebuxCon, I'll get ye a big ole bottle of gin. Then we need to get Dolly some Mike's Hard Lemonades, because all younglings have to start on those, lololo.
@sbucksminion The uhh, BRR or BBR or BR2 or whatever the manatees in a pool are calling it now is yet another system put in place to control our minds slash make the job easier for newhires/people who aren't battlescarred bar veterans with the 200 frap stare. It makes the process moreso of a production line sort of thing, despite the suits claiming it makes it less so.
Basically, .. how to explain. I'm apparently my store's pointman on it, and enforcing it, but I couldn't give too much of a crap about it because it requires three or four-part coverage, and we're on skeletal two-part nearly permanently. We get maybe a two hour overlap in the morning, then another in the afternoon, and those are only for half hour breaks.. so both overlaps are really just a single hour of everyone hauling **** to get stuff done.
Man, I don't know. On a single bar, you pump the syrups into the cup, queue up shots directly into the cup (if it's not a caramel macchiato), pour and stream the correct amount of milk, and in a perfect world all of this is finished at exactly the same time and it makes you 'faster,' giving you time to 'connect' with the chud waiting at your handoff plane. A floater is supposed to be marking cups for you, doing your coldbevs, and rinsing your pitchers. Nine times out of ten, the floater isn't doing any of those things, and the whole system collapses because you've got to drop everything you're doing and go make a frappuccino or rinse ten milk pitchers, and the register partner is calling drinks directly to you instead of the floater.
I figure it'd work with a) at the very least three part coverage and b) the floater actually doing their job and c) if it wasn't just a ploy to cut labor and d) get in the news back when it debuted.
Here's some dumb blog entry complete with quotes from 'Starbucks Gossip' with moar.
Be most leery of Starbucks Gossip; last I checked it was full of Kool-Aid swillers, Bux Commandos, and frappy trolls.
^ I quit a little over 2 weeks ago, IDK just because. It still sucks not smoking at work but I'm on the patch so it makes it slightly easier.
@sbucksminion
I'm the poo when it comes to BRR. Cuz I poo all over those guidelines and don't do it. BRR can suck it.
Oh noez! I'm not steaming like milks! uh ohhhhh!
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