Lessons Learned from Happy Hour 2012

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Lessons Learned from Happy Hour 2012

(18 posts) (15 voices)

Started 1 year ago by Dry Sharpie
Latest reply from Allison

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Dry Sharpie

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- Half-priced frappuccinos make monsters out of normal Starbucks customers.
- They demand to know why their frappuccinos are full-priced before May 4. They demand to know why their frappuccinos are full-priced before 3PM. They demand to know why their frappuccinos are full-priced after 5PM. They demand to know why their frappuccinos are full-priced on May 14.
- Stores are woefully unprepared to handle 2 hours of frappuccinos daily.
- Everyone needs to be retrained on making decent whipped cream (eyeballing doesn't work because you're all idiots)
- If the barista at the register or the floater doesn't take names, customers will steal each other's frappuccinos
- Even if the barista and floater take names, customers will steal each other's frappuccinos
- Customers KNOW that it's called a frappuccino. They will still call it a frap.
- "Openers versus Closers" rivalry comes back in full force, especially if there is no ice, extra frapproast or made whipped creams at 3PM.
- Frappuccino customers are most clingy of them all, everyone watching you like a hawk. Also, the most grabby.
- Frappuccino customers are the most forgetful, demanding last minute modifiers to their drinks when you pass them off. "Is this nonfat?" "Can I get a cup of iced water?" THE **** OUTTA HERE!
- Happy Hour shows the true strengths of baristas, whether they'll sink or swim at Starbucks
- JCF, MCF, MCCF, CCCF, DCCF, CCF, CF, CRF, CFL, CRFL. One wrong letter by the person writing cups and it holds up the entire bar.
- The person who invented the Mocha Cookie Crumble Frappuccino is the most hated individual at Starbucks. Just when you thought a java chip frappuccino was annoying to make...
- Happy Hour is a prelude to Starbucks in the summer-time. All you new hires, welcome to HELL.
- I will quit before I work another Happy Hour.
Feel free to add your own input. What could you or your store have improved on? How many times were you primary on cold beverage station during Happy Hour? Thoughts, comments on Happy Hour 2012?
Posted 1 year ago #
venti h2o

Member
Internets:85

Worked 3 days. I've never felt so sticky before in my life. What sucked the most was closing b/c usually we start to prep the bar for close around 2. It was delayed till 5 because of this madness -_-

HAPPY HOUR SUX BAWLZ.

"It's half off right!??! *stupid excited face*"

Posted 1 year ago #
SCSHC

Member
Internets:665

closed fri sat and sun after happy hour, our other closer called in sick all three days. Every other close for the rest of my days will seem like cake compared to these

Posted 1 year ago #
Cloverrated

Member
Internets:146

Cold bar on Friday, Saturday, Sunday, Tuesday, Wedmesday, Friday, Saturday, Sunday.

What I've learned is that some partners are incapable of doing anything beyond standing at a register like slugs and mismarking cups and gudigu49q3g43qgjhgagdas

Posted 1 year ago #
Señor Cardgage

Moderator
Internets:1,049

I did nine of the ten. I want our openers to choke to death on handfuls of Three Region blend.

You know, I'm not even a 'openers vs. closers' guy, but when it comes to calamities like this? When these idiots KNOW the rest of us have a war to fight, what do they do? I walk in to a store looking like Truman just got his Nagasaki on because the Japanese had their pants down and someone flew the Enola Gay of INDESCRIBABLE MESS over our airspace.

Oh, and, no prep done. None. None at all. Every single day. No matter how many times I said anything, no matter how much 'coaching' I did. It was like the holiday BOGO events- you know we're going to be making hundreds of stupid things that require certain components.. you know what, **** it, I don't care. I just **** god **** anal ****. Balls. I forget what happened to standards. Our openers are just lucky I don't have the authority to hand out final writtens, because I would have just flat out fired all of them for what they did to us every single day. And you all know I'm a pretty fair and even-handed guy, and I believe just about everything can be worked out with dialogue and cooperation. There will no longer be any cooperation from me. It is on. The war begins.

The morning people must be destroyed.

Posted 1 year ago #
KDH

Member
Internets:758

I'm grateful that I have awesome partners. There isn't a whole lot of opener vs. closer, we can eyeball whips and make them just fine, and my boss gave me this last weekend off because I requested it :) My main complaint is that we were one person short ALL WEEK. For 2 hours, the DTR was also doing hot bar and backup for cold bar. And we kept running out of ice -- thank science for another store being 6 miles away.

And our dumba$$ entitled customers, of course. We probably made 1/2 of our Frappuccinos 'normal' (MCCF) and 1/2 that went something like this: "MCCF, nonfat, with whip but no cookie crumbles. Oh, and can you do that decaf? I also have a separate order..."

Posted 1 year ago #
vanbeanfrapphotplz

Member
Internets:72

Our sinks/drains aren't meant to be running for 10 minutes straight while rinsing out the blenders during the first hour on the first day of this hellish time. Which resulted in swamp water almost flooding the unit. Edit: It also would have helped if my supervisor or just another coworkers was around either making the hot drinks or washing out the blenders, because when you have frap after frap there's no way you can do both without wanting to kill yourself more than you already want to.

Posted 1 year ago #
KDH

Member
Internets:758

Yeah, vanbean. We only had 2 people on cold bar with no one rinsing pitchers. That was the DTR's 3rd job. Terrible. You NEED 3 people on cold bar for this ridiculousness.

Posted 1 year ago #
caycaymickeyd

Member
Internets:6

On one of our days we ran out of ice. Imagine the chaos that ensued.
Also, the next day we were out of base and caramel.
Talk about wanting to die.

Posted 1 year ago #
Human Soul Frappucino

Member
Internets:439

I am really fortunate that we don't really have much openers vs closers rivalry at my store due to the large overlap of partners working mids and due to everyone generally getting along, so everyone has experienced both crazy busy mornings and busy nights where you still have to get all the cleaning done. BOTH morning and night teams overstocked and overprepped for the time of the Frapture, and we would barter with other stores whenever we still ran out of something.

I worked six of the ten days, half of them on bar, two as a floater, one as a ringer, and taking names and getting the codes right is so crucial while under siege. It also makes it easy to track who fr**ped up (partner or customer) and glare at them angrily for holding everything up. It was definitely sink or swim for everyone who wasn't already a seasoned partner.

Another huge thing that helped is that our SM made sure we had at least 4 people on for most days to do battle effectively with the horde. Even still, preclosers only had an hour to do their stuff while everyone else got caught up on breaks.

It also helped a lot that our supervisors each had a system to deal with it. The best one I thought involved rearranging the whole hot/cold bar/handoff areas and deployment system to prioritize frappuccino making over anything else:

FL would pump the roast, pour the milk, and pump syrups (including mochas) into the cup before queuing it in the drink line. If you swirl the milk/coffee while pumping the mocha in, it won't stick to the bottom like a heavy brown smear. FL was also responsible for calling down the line and getting coffees for R1.

R1 would ring people up, fetch pastries, warm food in the oven, pour coffees when R1 is busy, get those annoying iced waters, and deal with all the miscellaneous "oh and can I also *just* get..." requests. R1 was also responsible for rebrewing, so some R1s preground batches of coffee to pop in whenever a brew got low.

B1 became frappuccino support and finished frappuccinos, rinsed blenders for B2, made the odd hot drink, fetched replacement supplies from the back room, and most importantly, made sure customers didn't steal each others' frappucinos in their greedy eagerness. ("Sir! Is your name Rachel?")

B2 would pour and blend. And pour and blend. And pour and blend. And pour and blend. And pour and blend. And pour and blend. And pour and blend. And pour and blend. And pour and blend. And pour and blend. And pour and blend. And pour and blend. And make iced coffees and teas, too.

Posted 1 year ago #
acezwild55

Member
Internets:19

I wanna shank whoever made the Mocha Cookie Frappuccino... it doesnt even taste like a cookie just a sweet Java Chip, My stores baristas REGULARLY MAKE a cookies and cream frapp and it taste excatly as such

Posted 1 year ago #
Hot ice cream

Member
Internets:189

I fielding phone calls all day today, "are those frappe things on sale?" NO! Now go die. I worked 8 of 10. It is Soooooooo far from a "Happy Hour". Partners aren't happy. Customers aren't happy cuz they have to wait 20 mins to get their drink. And WHY are the computers printing off customer voice receipts? WTF!

Posted 1 year ago #
Cloverrated

Member
Internets:146

Hahahaha I forgot about how we ran out of ice during two Frappy Hours and had to order more in spite of our DM's insistence that if "the ice machines are being kept dust-free and are being emptied regularly, ice production shouldn't be an issue." A salient point, but I fear THE THREE HUNDRED FRAPPUCCINOS ON TOP OF **** KNOWS HOW MANY ICED TEAS/COFFES/MACCHIATOS/"JUST AN ICE WATER"/WHATEVER OTHER STUPID CRAP WE SERVE WOULD LIKE TO HAVE A WORD WITH YOUR COGENT ASSESSMENT OF THE SITUATION, MISS!

Posted 1 year ago #
coffeechick

Member
Internets:152

This year wasn't nearly as bad as the past. For the first time we were staffed, prepped, and had all the product we needed.

Posted 1 year ago #
JavaChap

Member
Internets:314

cloverrated, i just lol'd for real because i can imagine her saying that. YOU GO.

Posted 1 year ago #
ogkg.partner

Member
Internets:63

wow. some of your stores are just horrible. Our Crappy Hour sucked - 400 Frappuccinos each day is just ridiculous! However, this year, my SM did awesome at scheduling and planning! She shorted the morning crew so we had six - OMG six partners!!! she also let us pre-make frap. base (1 part Frap Roast to 3 parts milk) and then we just poured the mix to the bottom line - saved is alot of time. One of our shifts came up with an assembly-line thing: The first CB partner would start the monstrosity, and complete it through the blend step and pass the cup down. The second CB partner would put the blended monstrosity into the cup, top it, cap it & pass it to the bar partner who was only responsible for calling out the frapps, all hot drinks as well as iced coffee & tea. The second CB partner would also rinse & put the pitcher back down next to the blenders. Two register partners and one floater - it was the best set up!

Posted 1 year ago #
ogkg.partner

Member
Internets:63

wow. some of your stores are just horrible. Our Crappy Hour sucked - 400 Frappuccinos each day is just ridiculous! However, this year, my SM did awesome at scheduling and planning! She shorted the morning crew so we had six - OMG six partners!!! she also let us pre-make frap. base (1 part Frap Roast to 3 parts milk) and then we just poured the mix to the bottom line - saved is alot of time. One of our shifts came up with an assembly-line thing: The first CB partner would start the monstrosity, and complete it through the blend step and pass the cup down. The second CB partner would put the blended monstrosity into the cup, top it, cap it & pass it to the bar partner who was only responsible for calling out the frapps, all hot drinks as well as iced coffee & tea. The second CB partner would also rinse & put the pitcher back down next to the blenders. Two register partners and one floater - it was the best set up!

However - I am glad it's over. Too many demanding customers - one even complained cuz our iced tea was too cold ... really? too cold???

Posted 1 year ago #
Allison

Member
Internets:579

what we learned in our store:

+ don't start a whipped cream before checking to see if there is a clean nozzle.
+ don't make an equal amount of chocolate and plain whipped cream, that's just idiotic. only ONE drink gets the chocolate whipped cream, why wouldn't you make them in a 1:2 proportion.
+ swipe the card BEFORE you hand the cups off for 6 frappucinos. the person didn't have enough on the card, which tied up one register, and we didn't want to start the other until we knew they were coming back.
+ we kept cups just below the handoff and called out names and only put the drinks in their hands after they confirmed that it was their drink.

also, MAKE SURE YOU STOCK UP ON BASE. we ran out of coffee base on friday, none came in the order, so we had to substitute creme base for any non-light frappucino the rest of the weekend.

we had a countdown every day to 5:05:01, aka when Symphony stops making frappucinos half off. i threw pretend confetti around.

i also channeled my inner Chowder and started calling the MCCF as "Mocha Cookie Rabble Rabble".

Posted 1 year ago #

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