General Manager - General Manager Sur La Table Employee Review

3.0
Apr 2, 2018
Recommend
CEO approval
Business Outlook

Pros

Amazing Product and the cooking school and our customers are what get me going daily. Mt staff is wonderful but only because they like working with our team.. They stay because we have a family here.

Cons

Corporate is money hungry and makes unattainable numbers. They are not on the ground and don't understand how hard it is to run a business on 200 hours . They ask us to pay people horrible salaries and expect them to be happy enough to turn out big numbers. Corporate does not let us run our business and payroll in order to actually make the business run well.

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Sur La Table Response
8y
Hi! Thank you for taking the time to post your comment. I understand change is challenging and we have asked many employees to change the way they approach their business. We're grateful you've assembled a team you enjoy working with and that your customers keep you going. Thank you for 8 years of your service. In the last two years, a cross-functional team looked at the work each store completes; analyzing sales, traffic and other tasks by store. We made some adjustments to our labor model across all stores and reduced some of the task load at the same time. Additionally, In the last 8 years we have opened new stores - averaging 5 per year - while other retailers have closed doors or closed, permanently. We're not perfect and will make mistakes along the way so we appreciate your feedback and take it to heart. Some of our SMs and GMs have been successful in creating a business plan to strategically add additional hours to drive their business and achieve greater sales in the process. Over the summer we launched the Brand Specialist program specifically to support stores with training hours and additional selling hours on the floor. I encourage you to partner with your DM and/or National Director to develop a proposal and a plan for additional labor to drive and measure improved sales.

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5.0
Mar 21, 2026
Recommend
CEO approval
Business Outlook

Pros

This is a good job for benefits and teaching experience

Cons

Don’t have autonomy over cancelling classes

2.0
May 31, 2026
Recommend
CEO approval
Business Outlook

Pros

Staff was friendly and willing to help through the hiring and training process, and tasks were shared evenly

Cons

Management implements rules that harm the flow of sales and make for terrible checkout lines. Scheduling was always done last minute and it was impossible have a stable work schedule due to last minute changes and no stable scheduling duties for managers

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