Penzeys Spices Reviews

Pros

Great People, Great Message, Great Company

Cons

None - great company to work for.

Pros

None that I can think of.

Cons

The owner spews his leftist garbage and is actually the opposite of what he says! He sits behind his computer and states how loving and caring he is and non-racial. HIs entire upper management staff are all white males. He sends his kids to all white private schools out in the "white" suburbs. He lives in a huge house in a white neighborhood. But he says all conservatives are racist. He needs to look inward and find out what is wrong with himself first.

Pros

Extremely good treatment of employees by ownership and corporate. Whatever you think of their political orientation, they will always take employees' positions and are happy to assist patiently and extensively. Truly great customer service.

Cons

We often said in-store that working for Penzeys was like working for a mom & pop enterprise, in that some things were just clearly out of date considering the size of the company. Could be annoying to deal with sometimes. Additionally, you should expect to respond to intermittent customer complaints about Bill Penzey's expressed political views, though corporate has made efforts to take this responsibility off of employees' shoulders.

Pros

Good people work there. Employees get food made for them.

Cons

You smell like spices when you leave.

Pros

"Free" snacks, sodas, and meals once in awhile

Cons

HORRIBLE upper management, Standing for long periods of time, GOSSIPING high school environment (Coworkers), Snitching Coworkers, Way TOO many RULES, UNDERPAID for all of the PHYSICAL labor.

Pros

Free spices and good coworkers. Easy and laid back.

Cons

With a politically loud company owner, it is difficult to be on the front lines as a punching bag for customers who don’t agree. I do agree with the company politics but it does make it challenging to have pleasant customer interactions time to time.

Pros

I worked with great people at my store. The hours and pay were pretty good, and the job was mostly easy. Plus the free spices, and discount were great!

Cons

Unfortunately the owner was very political, and I think he also expected us to engage in discussions with the customers about politics. It started out as a peace and love kind of place and evolved into a pretty hateful judgmental environment. We had a lot of threats against us as his messages got more hateful towards certain people. It was also frustrating because the owner basically did what ever he wanted when ever he wanted, so there was a lot of times we were unprepared for sales.There was a lot of stuff they did that just didn’t make sense, and usually ended up in lots of waste! The managers were very nice but not very helpful with concerns, because they didn’t have a lot of say in what happens. It was like a dictatorship where no one else’s thoughts or opinions mattered.

Pros

Free spices from the employee bin plus a 30% off discount off of everything, including sale items. Flexibility from manager about days off and working with your schedule. Store manager and staff were fantastic to work with and made the frustrating aspects more bearable. Pay starts above average for the retail and private sector but does not change over time and raises are meager at best.

Cons

Disclaimer: Everything said here is about the corporate office and those above store manager level. If you get frustrated easily, this is not the place for you. Promotions are decided and changes are made with sometimes as little as two hours to prepare with no forethought to the actual implementation process and consideration for managers at the store level needing to adequately staff. Corporate office is out of touch with how individual stores operate and the needs and realities of employees and store managers. The owner is insulated and shielded from the goings-on in his company and is instead too focused on taking a stand politically instead of running his business. He spent 700k on political ads but can't keep his stores open and shuts down stores whose leases are up.

Pros

You get to try all the products and flexible hours.

Cons

The company's politics get blurred with the business and it creates a sometimes volatile work environment

Pros

Very part time, not very hard work, supportive work environment at store level, free spices

Cons

Sort of Confusing upper management structure