Ready or not, the holidays are here! It’s the busiest time of year for coffee shops and roasters alike. Customers are out and about – shopping for holiday gifts, meeting up with longtime friends, and getting ready to host family for the winter holidays.
As more customers flock to your café and roastery, wholesale customers place larger orders, and ecommerce orders are placed from all over the country, your employees can begin to feel the added stress and extra pressure.
Being the owner and/or manager of the business, it’s important to take the necessary steps to support your team’s well-being. After all, they need to enjoy the holiday season too!
In the last part of our holiday article series, we’re going to show you some steps to take care of your staff during the hectic holidays. You’ll learn:
You’ll walk away knowing how to help your employees have a happy holiday season.
From increased customer traffic to fulfilling the never-ending list of ecommerce orders, there’s a lot more to get done during the holiday months.
As we reviewed in part four, implementing new processes and systems to handle the heightened order volume is imperative and must be in place before the holiday rush hits. But new systems only get you so far.
You need the support of your employees and managers throughout the holiday season. If you pile everything on their plate and wish them good luck, chances are they’ll burn out fast – leaving you with a bare-bones team to finish out the season.
Instead, there are strategies you can use to manage employee workloads throughout the holiday season.
Yes, managing labor costs is always a concern for roastery and café owners. However, as the sales volume increases, so does the production output. And your current employees only have so much time and energy in the day to get it all done!
Hiring seasonal staff can not only help with the increased workload but also provide more flexibility in scheduling. This eases the pressure on current employees and offers them the opportunity to take a few extra days off during the holidays to relax, recharge, and come back well-rested.
When the giant last-minute wholesale order rolls in, you might need an extra hand or two to help with bagging and labeling. Or, when the café gets so busy on a Monday morning that your baristas are rushing around creating drinks, you might need someone to hop on the register.
Training a handful of employees across different tasks can lighten the workload for all when the going gets tough. Start with the tasks that need the least amount of training, such as:
These overflow or support roles aid in staff well-being while also providing additional training opportunities for employees interested in furthering their coffee careers. For instance, take the barista who has expressed interest in roasting and train them on your production processes. Or, make sure your admin staff understands behind-the-bar processes so they can properly hop on the register and take care of the line of customers forming.
Plus, certain roles within the roastery may not be as busy throughout the week. Look for tasks they can assist with, too!
One reason your staff might be stressed during the holidays is inefficient processes! We’ve talked about how inefficient processes lead to declining profitability before, but it can also lead to stressed out employees – especially during the busiest time of year.
Reducing inefficiencies in your roastery can cut down on the time it takes to:
And this is only a small sample of what can be streamlined!
The goal of identifying and eliminating inefficiencies is to save your employees time and effort as more and more orders roll in at the end of the year.
Read More: How to Reduce Inefficiencies in Your Coffee Roastery
Sometimes we fall victim to the promise of opportunity. We overpromise tight delivery dates or a certain roast volume to customers to seal the deal and bring in a nice chunk of revenue during the holidays.
While additional revenue is great, you might be creating more stress for yourself and your staff in the long run.
Instead, be realistic and upfront about shipping and ordering deadlines with existing and new customers. And make sure these timelines are realistic for your staff to fulfill!
With these ordering boundaries in place, you may find yourself in a situation where you need to put your foot down. If a customer misses the ordering deadline for the week, don’t automatically say you can fulfill it! It may need to be pushed to next week’s production cycle to not overload your staff.
Saying “No” to a customer is never easy, but it’s well worth it for your employees to be happy, healthy, and taken care of.
When employees are overworked and overwhelmed, mistakes happen.
Orders are missed…
The wrong coffee is sent to an ecommerce customer…
A piece of equipment gets broken…
When your employees have a healthy work-life balance, they’re at the top of their game and ready to execute the tasks for the day.
A few ways you can help employees find moments of calm and downtime include:
The more your employees feel at ease and recharged, the better morale they’ll have all holiday season long.
On top of ensuring a safe, healthy, and balanced work environment for your employees, there are also many little gestures you can do to show employees you care. Throughout the holiday season, consider the following ideas:
At the end of the day, boosting employee morale – no matter the time of year – involves showing you genuinely care about each employee’s success and overall well-being. Continue this trend long after the holiday season concludes!
Yes, the holiday season is demanding for everyone. Between managing incoming orders and calculating production needs, the workload inevitably increases. But when you take simple steps to support your staff, they’ll feel appreciated and be energized to tackle whatever the holidays throw their way.
This winter, find ways to:
In the end, it’s your team’s hard work that makes each holiday season successful.
Did you catch parts 1-4 of our holiday preparation series? Be sure to read them all! 👇
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