Cold Stone Creamery Reviews

Pros

Coworkers were nice and generally friendly
Received tips weekly, which was always one of the only reasons I didn't quit right away

Cons

The management was so completely unprofessional and downright mean at times that it was dreadful to work the morning shifts (when the store manager or the assistant manager would always be present). Even when I did a task proficiently, praise or even the slightest compliment was hard to come by. A lot of unsanitary practices going on in the back too. I was often left alone in the store while one of the managers went to go the store or a Cold Stone in a nearby city due to how often we ran out of supplies. It was generally very disorganized, very unpleasant, and just not as fun as the company would like you to believe. This is ultimately the downfall of working for franchise companies. I absolutely do not recommend this job to anybody, anywhere.

Advice to Senior Management

Learn to train your employees with more support and patience. You always seemed very impatient when it came time for me to perform a new task. That might explain the rather high turnover rate. Many people I know of who have worked here or know someone who has all say the same thing about management. It made it very unpleasant to work there when the manager would yell at you and take over the job you're still being trained on.

Pros

- good time off
- great people to work with
- easy job

Cons

- never get a pay raise no matter what/terrible pay
- no Consequences for actions of others when they do something wrong
-are treated like we dont deserve raises no matter how long we work there
-owners get us in trouble for stupid things.
- schedule is not fair because owners dont want to put out any money they dont have to

Advice to Senior Management

-give us raises! we work so hard.
-treat your employees with respect that they know what they are doing and what they are talking about.

Pros

tips
fast paced environment
free ice cream (but you probably won't want it after being around it all day)
easy job

Cons

management doesn't always listen to schedule preferences
customers can be really rude, especially when the store is busy
coworkers are often very slow

Pros

Can be a lot of fun
if you enjoy singing and dancing, you get lots of opportunities to
free ice cream!
great feeling of making people happy when you make them good ice cream or offer good suggestions

Cons

lots of memorization
mostly high school students working there - lots of pettyness
some people complained about the amount of work (I didn't think it was bad at all though)

Advice to Senior Management

try to understand your employees! they're people too!

Pros

When the couple who owns the 3 coldstones in Rochester weren't around, things were generally fine. Some of the shift leaders were great

Cons

However, , some shift leaders were awful and even manipulated the tip jar to get more money. The owners are extremely rude to employees, play favorites, and make you give up your social life to work there. You have to know your schedule a month in advance or switch shifts if you're scheduled. If you don't show up once, you're fired (unlike most places where if you don't show up 3 times you're fired). If you're legitimately ill and can't find someone to cover your shift, you're fired. The poor management is ridiculous, and you're underpaid. Minimum wage plus tips? Nobody goes to Coldstone anymore, let alone tips.

Pros

Great atmosphere, great people, flexible hours, fun, fantastic product, encouraging and rewarding management, great place to learn valuable lessons in customer service, food, and life in general.

Cons

required to work nights, weekends, and holidays as normal in retail. low ceiling for pay and growth opportunities, poor system in place for keeping a consistent employee behavior (i.e. little consequences for tardiness, breaking of dress code, performance issues, etc.)

Advice to Senior Management

Regional directors need to be more thorough in their quarterly store reviews, there needs to be a standard system for employee reviews and how to handle unsatisfactory employees. also, there needs to be a way for voices to be heard regarding product ideas, marketing strategies, etc. even from crew members

Pros

fun
Tips
Icecream!!!!
Long breaks
The manager was

Cons

Very fast paced
No where to sit

Advice to Senior Management

I have nothing to say

Pros

free ice cream
tips
music during work

Cons

not enough hours
always busy, not enough workers
late hours

Advice to Senior Management

treat workers better. distrubute more hours with higher pay.

Pros

At the location I worked at, after the owners left the managers would let us take home unlimited free ice cream. We could also give free stuff away to our friends who would come in.

Cons

Working late Saturday night shifts and then early Sunday shifts. Working every weekend kind of sucked. Overall it was an easy and painless summer job.

Advice to Senior Management

Don't hire so many people that you can barely give everyone a few hours to work during the week. It sucks when employees have hardly any hours.

Pros

Tips are great
You get one free ice cream//smoothie per shift
Competitive wages and room for advancement and promotion within the franchise (but not so much into the company as a whole)

Cons

Not a whole lot of professional development
Not a lot of support for it to be a summer job for high school students (want you to work year-round)

Advice to Senior Management

I would probably say that you need to have more of an incentive for a worker to stay on past their first summer (what I did) with professional development opportunities and better prospects for advancement (a 25 cent/hour raise is NOT enough)