Peet's Reviews

Pros

great benefits, including free coffee and tea
great people to work with and interesting conversations with customers and other employees

Cons

shift hours tend to be too short, many employees including myself enjoy working less shifts, but more hours- preferably eight instead of five

Advice to Senior Management

Keep doing what you are doing to provide a great experience for both your employees and your customers. I enjoy working with your company.

Pros

they have great health benifets, that are available to anyone working over 21 hours per week. they are also flexible regarding your schedules.

Cons

you are not assigned a permanent schedule, so it is difficult to make weekly plans. there is little customer respect , these days for service workers.

Pros

You will love this company if you are into coffee and tea! They have the largest selection of tea that I have seen thus far from a retailer. You also get 1/2 of coffee or a tin/box of tea every single week! You get a 45min lunch break which is common for retail at least in my experience. The dress code is pretty much wear what you want just no logos or graphic tees.

Cons

Limited advancement opportunity is Southern California compared to Northern California where the headquaters are and the most of their stores. There is a only about 50 of less store in SoCal and they are spread out really far. If you are looking to promote to your next level it is hard, because there are so many people ahead of you. Or they may have the advantage of working with a well groomed manager who may even be a training manaer (they train all new manager coming into the company).

Advice to Senior Management

Communicate more effectively to all levels of your team. So many times during my experience there was little to none when important information was to be delivered!

Pros

Free coffee, good coworkers, flexible schedule

Cons

No good opportunities for advancement, employees are interchangeable.

Pros

Really good coffee, which is free for employees any time....employees get lots of free product
Customers at this location tip pretty well
Corporate ridiculousness is present, but enforcement is minimal
Health insurance is affordable, good
Flexible scheduling
Most regular customers are pretty cool
Company supports small farmers, sustainable practices
Peet's generally hires intelligent, interesting people with personality, not corporate drones

Cons

Although it doesn't pay terribly for the type of job it is, it's still a low level retail job where you have to work pretty hard and go home tired while making just enough money for the essentials. Advancement is possible but you have to talk the corporate talk pretty convincingly, of course, perhaps more so than be thoroughly competent. And pretty much devote years to the company working for very little money, before moving up.

Advice to Senior Management

Corporate: employees don't want to take on more responsibility without getting paid more. "Development" should equal raises. 90-95% of your employees are retail staff or shift leads, neither of which make hardly any money. Most of them do not see Peet's as a career, only a during-college or between-jobs job. Opportunities for advancement are minimally important to most; good work environment and getting paid more now is most important. Trim total labor hours and give raises/more hours to the hardest workers. Keeping employees happy cuts back drastically on all that money you spend on training and all the money you lose because of errors made by new staff. Not to mention all the directly-unquantifiable things, like customers having bad experiences with inexperienced, under-trained employees, and getting a bad impression of the company. Keeping the good employees happy and minimizing turnover will make you more money in the end, guaranteed. The 10 to 20 cent raises we all got, this year? Not even keeping up with inflation, guys. We're the face of the company. Pay us to smile.

Pros

-employees and customers were nice
-enjoyed the work environment
-training prepared me for the job
-learned a lot about coffee and tea

Cons

-regional management was annoying
-managers were sometimes not that flexible

Pros

company has great prestige in san francisco coffee industry so others think you have a good job

Cons

in reality you just have an entry level grunt job but if thats what youre looking for and wiling to settle for, then great

Advice to Senior Management

you seem to be making good money for the company so who am i to say anything

Pros

Lot's of growth opportunities. Excellent training available. High level of competence of the staff. Informed their employees well of products.

Cons

can be busy, overwhelming, hours are long and early. The tips are split over the entire week and factored by hour so if you work a lot of mornings, you are jipped of your tips.

Advice to Senior Management

Excellent job, might want to focus more on encouraging hard-working employees with obvious potential who might not have the confidence to pursue leadership roles on their own.

Pros

Peet's management rewards hard work. I was promoted in 6 months and given continuous feedback on performance. Lots of employee training and development made job success easier.

Cons

Management was not very transparent about changes in company structure or company information outside of our location. Changes in management structure were not communicated well.

Advice to Senior Management

You have a great brand and train your employees well, but you should bring them into the structure of the company and get them to understand the culture as well as the brand/product.

Pros

- Free coffee
- Tips
- Great product
- Awesome and loyal customers
- A feeling that what we're doing is important

Cons

Peet's is becoming more like Starbucks every month. Raising prices, focusing less and less on product quality and more on fad drinks, and for god's sake a reach-in cooler? What's next, breakfast sandwiches and warming ovens?

Shift leads are no longer given anything close to full time. If anything, they are given 20 - 27 hours a week and have to call other stores for shifts just to make ends meet.

This company used to be about coffee quality and making sure that every drink was made to exacting standards. Now the focus is all about speed of service and upselling pastries. There is now an appallingly punitive zero-tolerance "point accrual" system of discipline that, over time, will ensure that everyone currently working for the company will be fired regardless of how innocuous or legitimate the need to switch shifts. Working for Peet's now feels like laboring under the sword of Damocles.

Advice to Senior Management

Get rid of the point system! Or at least make it so switching shifts doesn't count against your permanent record.

Give shift leads full time.

It's ridiculous that a company with a superior product seeks to emulate a distant-second competitor.