Starbucks Reviews in Houston, TX Area

Pros

Their main focus is customer service which gives you a good relationship with your customers. If your customers are happy then your happy.

Cons

You have to be willing to learn right away and it's very fast paced.

Pros

-Very flexible schedule
-Great benefits
-Tips and good pay
-Fun and fast paced
-Social interaction with partners and customers encouraged
-Informal attitudes with customers - much more conversational
-Great opportunities for promotion

Essentially, Starbucks is an awesome place to work while you're going to college or just getting started. There's always plenty to learn and, depending on the district, they like to promote from within often.

Cons

-On your feet for the entire shift - get some good shoes!
-Rush hours can be VERY stressful
-Customers can be ridiculous

Sometimes things get VERY busy and if you're short staffed (which happens often), these times can make you want to pull out your hair. Customers can also be a pain in the butt, requesting very specific drinks and demanding a new one if the first is not perfect. Management at the store level can also be unqualified to handle supply orders and manage employees.

Advice to Senior Management

Keep a tighter reign on your store and district managers! The wrong person in the wrong spot can make an employees life hell.

Pros

-Artist outlook preparing beverages
-Go in early, get out early
-Fun environment
-Meet all kinds of people
-Knowlege sharing for new products
-Community involvement..(depending on store)

Cons

-One bad manager, can ruin "the whole company" for the many good managers.
-Fast paced, sometimes can be stressful
-"Asking for help" is a star skill, however if you are completely left alone doing all the work, how can you ask for help, if no one is there.
-Sometimes you are in the same position.
-Sometimes you have to work on holidays (Thanksgiving, Christmas) Based on the store.

Advice to Senior Management

Respect your employees and keep it professional.

Pros

Benefits for part time partners.

Cons

Taking out trash and the smell of coffee all the time

Advice to Senior Management

More middle management

Pros

.Excellent benefits, flexible scheduling, cash tips supplement weekly wages, all the coffee you can drink, fast paced environment makes the day go by fast

Cons

Little recognition for a job well done, once you have attained supervisor position there's no where to go, poor communication between store manager and everyone else, not everyone follows guidelines and there's little recourse.

Advice to Senior Management

Listen to those in the trenches, they have a birds eye view of what works and what doesn't. Corporate office folk offer little help and much confusion. Management turn over is necessary at some point to keep ideas fresh.

Pros

The benefits are almost unbeatable. If you get a good boss you have fun at work. I recommend working at a non drive thru.

Cons

It's really a crap shoot depending on which boss you work for. Getting promoted is all about sucking up to the boss. Get in with them on a personal level and they'll take care of you. Don't worry about becoming the best barista. That actually hurts growth. The better barista you are, the less they want to promote you. They don't believe in promoting from within. in 4 years, almost every shift supervisor I've had was hired in as one. It's not impossible to get promoted, but like I said it has nothing to do with how good you are at your job.

Advice to Senior Management

Stop cramming stupid promotions down our throats. Customers get pretty tired of going to their favorite starbucks and having to tell us NO!!!! when we try to sell them Via 2 times a day.

Pros

Benefits, vacation, free stock, mgmt pay is good considering mgrs work about 40-45 hours a week which allows for work/life balance. Development and feedback are a focus so that expectations are always increasing. Customers are nice a majority of the time and you actually have some nice regulars.

Cons

Working with food and often participating in some dirty work/cleaning that is essential to store cleanliness. Very high Maintenance customers that occationally unleash undeserved verbal assault and throw tantrums. As a manager, Barista and Shift Supervisors do not get paid sufficiently for the demands placed upon them.

Advice to Senior Management

While understanding the critical relationship of sales targets and driving the promotion. Recognize that some managers have a varied demographic and all things should not be expected to be successful in all stores. Just make sales, controllable contribution, and total contribution be your measuring stick of success. Allow managers to take TRUE OWNERSHIP and push what sells in their store to acheive sales target, lest we alienate our customers by forcing a specific product down their throat!

Pros

It was a lot of hard work but the overall experience was incredibly rewarding. It was great spending time with my coworkers, getting to know my regular customers, and creating coffee that made my customers happy. I received a lot of great benefits and the pay was not bad at all.

Cons

The drive-thru is such a hassle to deal with as so many rude people come by.

Pros

Good pay for what you do, great if you like people, flexible hours

Cons

Hours, middle management, alot of outside higher lately.

Advice to Senior Management

Please stop higher outside the company when you have competent people already working for you who already want to move up!

Pros

Benefits. - Health care (20hrs/wk.=250hrs min./per qtr.), 401k, Stock options, etc... free coffee...
Tips (a little extra cash in your pocket)
Weekly pound of coffee or tea
Depending on store staffing, some really great people (partners) to work with.
Work when you want to work (lax scheduling)
A clean environment

Cons

Senior Management in Seattle are having a hard time deciding on what the company wants to do in the future to keep afloat. One thing right after another (tea lattes --> movies about spelling bees --> back to true coffee -->SELL SELL SELL those cupcakes! ---> brew fresh coffee every 30 mins --> Instant Coffee is the best coffee in the world!) All just way to wishwashy for me.

Don't expect to make it up the retail ladder : store closures make it hard to internally move up.

Sometimes hard to get shifts covered... and the hardest to get covered when you wake up ill at 5am

Ok pay ("Made up by the benefits, can be true")

Deal with the general public : Older people, business people, teenagers, soccer moms, people that live out of their cars, people that bring their office into the store to sit in a comfy chairs for 8 hours straight, the stalkers, and the meanest people coming in right after church.

Advice to Senior Management

Why change the mission statement? I feel that that is just another way of saying "Well, we couldn't live up to that goal, lets trash it and get a new one" I had to memorize it when I joined.

Focus on one thing! We cannot please them all. This leads to sub-par quality, and upset customers. Why innovate the experience when you can perfect the product, which will innovate the overall ambiance of a store.

...Don't move any more people around up there in Washington. We cannot get back on our feet when we keep hacking away branches of a stable company...

And work on keeping partners at stores by not taunting a GREAT PLACE TO WORK! and actually giving us a great place to work. Practice what you preach.