How to Hire the Perfect Barista for Your Business
It doesn’t matter how good your location or your coffee. Without a talented team of staff including baristas, no business will be successful.
But how do you surround yourself with the best people? Here are our tips for how to hire the perfect barista for your business.
Look for customer service and ‘attention to detail’ skills
Good baristas have an excellent attention to detail. This focus and care means that they produce consistently good and well-presented coffee. They maintain high standards in the presentation and preparation of your products, meaning your customers are satisfied and come back again and again.
To create a successful business, you also need to create a welcoming environment. That means you need baristas who have excellent people skills and provide first-class customer service. Creating a rapport with customers means repeat business, and people are more likely to buy from businesses that they like.
Good customer service from charismatic and welcoming staff also leads to word-of-mouth referrals.
Finally, it can pay to hire conscientious workers who can help you to eliminate waste and control costs. Hiring baristas with a proactive attitude who can bring solutions to your business issues can help you to keep a tight rein on your expenditure.
Consider people with no previous coffee shop experience
Unless you’re looking for a team leader or a very experienced barista, you should consider taking on staff with no previous coffee shop experience.
If you provide high-quality training, it can pay to hire staff with no pre-conceived ideas or bad habits. A person’s personality and character traits are often more important than their experience.
If a person has excellent customer service skills and a proactive attitude, then the teaching of how to make your specific drinks is the easy bit!
Photo by Gustavo Fring from Pexels
Ask the right questions at interview
When you have shortlisted potential candidates and you are scheduling interviews, it’s vital that you prepare well and ask the right questions.
Write out a series of questions and potential follow-up questions to ask each applicant. You need to make sure that these questions help you to discover the positive traits that you’re looking for in a barista.
Ask the candidate to tell you about their skills and experiences through open questions. Posing questions that begin with ‘how’, ‘what’, ‘why’ and ‘when’ encourage the candidate to talk about themselves.
Be prepared to make the odd mistake
No one has a 100% success rate in hiring staff. Even if you’ve taken all the right steps during the recruitment process, sometimes a person simply doesn’t fit in with your team or your ethos.
Hiring the wrong person can result in wasted money in training costs and create a problem with your other staff. So, don’t rush into hiring someone you’re not sure about.
It’s important to remember that if you find you hired the wrong person, it isn’t the end of the world. Just make sure that you deal with the issue quickly, so it doesn’t cause ongoing problems with the rest of your team.
For help in finding the perfect barista for your business, post a job on the Meet Your Barista website today.
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