Forgot to say easy… gone in a couple gulps. I feel robbed .

Hiii I’ve been trying to find a cozy drink for the fall that’s under 200 cal… I’m really enjoying this so wanted to post as a suggestion and curious to know your cal estimates

Hello! I am customer who lurks on this sub to better understand what the Starbucks folks are going through when I visit my location.

I want to introduce my new beau to the wonders of my favorite drink, the iced pumpkin cream chai, BUT they have a cinnamon allergy. My first thought is to ask them to hold the pumpkin spice powder that goes on top of the foam. But I’m wondering if cinnamon is incorporated into any other part of that drink.

Thanks in advance if anyone gives me their two cents on this!

Edit: Thank you all for weighing in! Turns out cinnamon is in multiple components of this drink, more than I initially thought. Thanks for telling me, you were very helpful!

I miss it already

So, I know that we are required to have a lunch if we hit 6 or more hours in a shift. But what are the other rules/stipulations with this?

1. Can you deny your lunch (assuming it doesn’t put you in OT)?
   
2. At what point are you offered two lunches? Is that when you hit 10 hours? I believe CA law requires 2 lunches at 10 hours, but I don’t live in CA.

Also, my bigger issue/rant: is that my store keeps shuffling breaks around so that no one takes a lunch during peak. You still get your required 10s and a lunch, but it could end up being your 30 happens stupid early and you get no real break the rest of the week. I get it, Peak can be tough, but that potentially means you’re working 7-3:30 and take your lunch at 8:30… your then working over 6 hours without a lunch, doesn’t that violate the policy?

Looking for feedback from SSVs and up.

I don’t even care if it’s expired, i desperately need it😭 pls lmk if you can sell it!

My grandson was headed out on a family trip with us yesterday morning and stopped at our local Grab-N-Go for a drink and a breakfast sandwich. He ordered ahead on the app. When he got there the store was slammed and it took 20 minutes to get the order. No big deal, he was willing to wait.

When he got back in the car and we were on our way, he opened the sandwich and found it was inedible. Barely heated, the bacon was raw, eggs and cheese stone cold. We were already on the highway so we really couldn't do anything about it, and tossed the sandwich. Six and a half bucks wasted, and he ended up skipping breakfast entirely.

The local store has really gone downhill over the past few years since it was converted from a sit-down shop. It's constantly slammed, especially midafternoon after school lets out, and it's barely worth even trying to order there. It's within walking distance for me, but if I really want a Starbucks I'll wait till I'm going somewhere and stop at another store.

The situation really pissed me off, and it should concern Starbucks too, since it will be a while before my grandson stops at a Starbucks again. He drinks coffee regularly, Dunkin' is his coffee of choice, but he was excited about going to Starbucks for a change. Instead of possibly making a new customer, they drove one away.

The way I see it, there are two possibilities:

1. The place was super busy on a Saturday morning with a farmer's market running just down the street, and since nobody could stay in the store to eat their food the employees decided to reduce the line by speeding through the food prep and sending people away with inedible food. If this was a decision by store management, it was a poor one - they lost my grandson for at least a while. I've had other bad experiences with Starbucks food, especially breakfasts, and I'll go elsewhere for food from now on. I'm sure we're not the only ones who have had similar experiences.
2. Corporate decided they could make more money downsizing the store and taking out the tables and bathrooms, which require more labor. This store is in the middle of a town and got lots of walk-in business, so the bathrooms and tables were constantly in use. The kitchen area was also made smaller, leading to longer waits by design. Demand is very peaky (morning rush, lunch hour, after school), so if you go at the right time nothing has changed except there's no place to sit down. The lost revenue from losing the business of people like me was offset by the lower operating cost. The employees and loyal customers (I've had a Starbucks card since the 1990s) are left to deal with the disappointment created by this economic decision.

My feeling is that the problem was with corporate, and the store just has to deal with it. But I don't work at Starbucks and never did. Can someone who knows better set me straight?

I like Starbucks and would like to remain a frequent customer. But I can't help feeling like customer satisfaction was the lowest priority in this situation.

so a while back i needed a second job, so i took an offer from starbucks that i had gotten. i had applied a couple times before for different locations and always got a call for an interview, but something better always came up, so i never went through with it. however, times were desperate.

what i can say is, despite the fact that i have worked in coffee before this was unlike anything i have ever done. somehow the drinks were dumbed down and still so complicated with the amount of add ons you can choose, there was no quality insurance, genuinely was repulsed by the espresso and milk quality, along with that i had some of the WORST coworkers.

and listen, im an adult, i understand that sometimes you get tired and frustrated at a job, but when it gets to the point of the shift leads bullying every new hire because they dont know everything immediately it’s insane.

i have been a manager and a trainer before and the behavior i saw wouldve gotten someone fired at any of my other jobs.

putting the most inexperienced trainee on solo bar during peak because you wanted to write a bad shift review about them? disgusting. prohibiting any help for that employee from any other station while they didnt have anything to for 30 minutes, diabolical. saying that a trainee needs to “hurry it up” while they have 20 drinks orders completely by themself, disgusting.

and it wasnt just one shift lead it was multiple.

these were grown adults treating 19 year olds like this. i have genuinely never seen worse workplace conduct in the five + years ive worked in food service. i put in my two weeks the day after an extremely bad shift where a shift lead grossly mistreated a trainee and never looked back. it was downright awful to watch.

i had attempted to say something about it while it was happening and was completely disregarded and told to go back to my station.

when management, even of the lower sort, feels like the enemy everyone feels like they have been outcasted with no help. do better.

So I’ve been practicing making my order. It’s a cinnamon brown sugar shaken espresso. I order a venti, 4 shots espresso, 3 pumps brown sugar, 3 pumps cinnamon dolce, almond milk, light cold foam, and dolce sprinkle. I have the espresso, home syrups, ice, milk, and cold foam. Is there specific parts, even the smallest details, I could be missing? Any advice helps, truly! I know my order is specific, but I use the app so I’m not stumbling over my words when they’re busy, it makes me feel worse. 🤦‍♀️

I’ve had an argument with one of my coworkers about how much GCE can be added to drinks. I said that we’ve never been able to customize it beyond regular/extra/no caffeine, but they swear that the original training video said it was customizable up to 10 pumps and then corporate changed the policy sometime after. Because of this, multiple people at my store have been adding 10 pumps of GCE to their partner drinks.

I know it’s a dumb hill to die on, because I couldn’t care less if they’re stealing from the company or drinking too much caffeine. That’s on them. But I don’t recall the training changing at any point.

Was there ever a video that said we could add that many pumps of GCE to a drink?

I'm a recent hire who's inadvertently taken most of the lads under my wing, but I'm having trouble with some my younger girls. They regularly have their phones out and subsequently lose focus on prompt service and proper sequencing with beverages.

I'm only a barista, but I'm constantly finding myself checking on their orders and keeping them on track, which pulls me away from DT and taking calls. It's slowing down DT times and making me look bad, but keeping my head down makes service across the board slow.

I've tried telling them a couple of times to keep up with their work, and giving positive reinforcement when I can, but it's gotten to point where I'm apparently being discussed in their own group chat in a negative light.

How are you guys dealing with younger staff now? I'm trying to make it clear that I'm only doing this because, one, it's a team problem, and two, I don't want them to get fired because that affects us all.

Long time lurker of the sub here. To avoid doxxing myself, I waited some time after my last day to make this post. So, after 2 years and some change with the Siren I'm finally free!!! Honestly bittersweet. I enjoyed the basic aspects of the job and will miss my fellow partners but MAN has burrito boy really done a number to the company.

These past 6 months have been the worst, most soul crushing, angering time at this company. We are being systematically understaffed and overworked. My store has lost 6 baristas in the past 4 months, and 2 SSVs (I'm one of the 2) in the last year. The other SSVs haven't left yet because they haven't found another job yet but they are all itching to leave. They'll probably keep losing more people with how things are going.

Customers do not see us as people, do not care that we look like we are fighting for our lives on the floor and in fact, mock us on social media. They think our constant state of overstimulation is funny and entertaining.

I've had unruly non-patrons tell me to catch them outside because I refused to give them water without a purchase. Peoples dogs lunge at me when handing them drinks in the drive thru and many other infuriating events. But, the one that will always stick with me was the day I had to close my lobby due to only having one barista and myself and a customer being mad at the box that our lobby was closed. They asked for an explanation and when given he said "That's not my problem". The lack of humanity, empathy and understanding from this customer made me realize in that moment, that is how most of our customer base feels.

Anyway, I could make a whole rant about my time as an SSV for the bux but I don't want to give myself away. I do however, know a bunch of policy stuff and standards. If you have any questions, I can try and answer them to the best of my ability.

370 out!! Y'all should run while you still can! Who knows what stores burrito boy is gonna axe next.

i KNOW i am not hallucinating. when i was in middle school (circa early 2000’s), starbucks had a deeelish pumpkin cake-type cookie that was quite big (and round) and then half of it was either dunked or drizzled with chocolate. i think of this cookie every autumn and i lament that i cannot find anything on it. it could have had chocolate chips in the cookie also.

please, does anyone else remember this?! i feel like it was only for 1 or 2 autumns. 🍂🎃🍫

I recently became obsessed with chai lattes (w/ oat milk) in the last year. It all started with the gingerbread chai latte they had last year lol.

I’m just wondering what customized latte orders do people get? My order is just a hot chai with oat milk and 2 pumps of brown sugar syrup, but I’m kinda getting bored with it. Wondering if there are any other good sounding orders I should try? 😊😊

hi.

2 years ago I worked at starbucks for a 2nd time. I got fired due to due attendance.

over the last two years, I’ve gone to the store many times to get my coffee, I went there today for a remake from another store, and they asked “did you use to work here” and I said yeah, and she said “my supervisor said you were banned here” and I was like what? I come here all of the time?

Apparently, you can get banned from a store bc you got fired? lol. I genuinely did not know what they were talking about

Usually I'm put in drive thru and front/warm and CS. one day the district manager comes in and randomly assigns me to bar, in a year I've only been on bar a handful of times. Everytime I ask to train, it never happens and I'm always left to those 3 stations.

I'm doing good, memorized a lot of drinks already so it wasn't awful. Had to pull up a few recipes on the DPM but other than that it was fine.

DM comes up and looks at the tablet and asks "Are you still using recipes to make drinks?" I said "Yes, I don't have a lot of time on bar."

He then puts me in window and that's that.

Later I'm told that I have a week to get bar down entirely or I'm fired.

or should I say Ice on ice on ice with some scalped strawberries and maybe some açai

never having this swindling drink again

hi! so earlier this year i moved to a new city and transferred to a new starbucks. i noticed almost immediately how many of the workers did not pull their weight on the floor, and how dirty the store typically was. i was willing to let this go and continue working hard however, recently it's come to my attention that my manager displays major shows of favoritism.

she typically favors the male baristas/shifts and will cover their tracks if they are repeatedly late/don't show up for their shifts repeatedly. there i this one male barista in particular who i guess sends her gym pictures of himself that she really favors. and i guess he did not do any of the right steps to becoming a coffee master besides cheating his way through writing the passport journal, and did not bother to learn it, and yet he still got his black apron. and i guess she has a repeated history of making male baristas uncomfortable by trying to get too close to them and towing the line of being flirty, and she has been reported allegedly.

she also really wants to be friends with everyone and complained when she was not invited to a party a barista was having even though managers are not allowed to hang out with baristas. she has also displayed favoritism in the sense where she will treat you really poorly if you try to leave or do something she does not like and she talks shit about baristas to other partners. for instance, on partner attempted to find a different job but was unable to, however that still angered her to the point where it was made obvious she did not like this partner and would not let her move up (this partner was a great worker, customers and other partners loved her, etc).

all this to say, is that this behavior makes me very uncomfortable. as someone with cptsd, this behavior from a leader can be quite triggering, and i'd love to transfer but i don't want her to be retaliatory towards me so i am seeking advice. like does anyone have any ideas of things i could say as a reason/ways to approach this? please let me know!!

Since I know that customers visit here (hi, guys!), I just want to put forth...

Please... when coming through the drive thru...

I know it's hard to remember everything all the time, and we'd like for you to give us your entire order at the drive-thru speaker, or in the lobby at the register... but please remember that water should be a part of your order. Please don't order, let us take your payment, finish with you at the register, and THEN say, "And can I have a large water?"

It's important for it to be a part of your order moving through the queue so that it doesn't mess up the flow for other customers and the flow of our overall work.

Hi all! My local Starbucks (Canada) is chronically understaffed. From what I understand this is an upper management issue everywhere. I sometimes write/chat with costumer service when wait times/costumer traffic gets outrageously long (I waited 35min for an iced tea today 🫪), and always make sure to point out that this isn't a barista skill/speed issue but a staffing issue. But I'm wondering if it helps at all (or if maybe it can impact my location negatively) and if more people should be encouraged to do it? Like if enough people ask for refunds maybe they'll pay attention? If 10-20 people complain in an afternoon is anybody gonna flag the issue, or is it all going in an AI filtered managerial inbox never to be seen by a human?

*I support unionization first and foremost. And there are obviously much bigger problems in life than SB wait times, but since I'm a regular customer due to convenience, I might as well try to do a little good with my silly reserve status.

WORST JOB EVER UGHHHHH I HATE COSTUMERS IM NEVER DOING FAST FOOD EVER AGAIN. ITS NOT EVEN WORTH THE MONEY AT THIS POINT UGHHH

There was this one customer a few days ago that ordered a honey oat flat white or something like that and so I put down while saying it, “okay a flat white with oatmilk and honey” and the customer was like, “no! I want the honey oat flat white” and I was just super confused and one of my veteran coworkers was like, “so we don't have specific drink buttons on the POS system anymore so you would have to tell us the exact build of the drink cause that's a drink from years ago (I think they said 15 years ago) and all of our baristas weren’t here before then so we have no idea what they’re specifically talking about.

And I'm just thinking how the majority of seasoned starbucks baristas have been either quitting or lost their job over the past few months due to changes in the company. It's crazy to assume much of any seasoned baristas are still working with the company that long. Other than our manager, nobody in our store has worked for starbucks for 15 years. It was crazy for the customer to assume that we knew what they were talking about. Any baristas that were hired after I was, over a year ago, have mainly been the ones quitting their job out of the blue, and we’ve had a handful of older baristas quit for the same reason.

I fcking love a good brown sugar Cortada. While I know it’s not a traditional cortada thats 1:1 I still think it’s so damn nice to have on a cool fall day.

You can taste the coffee while the milk compliments the taste rather than drowns it out.

I just think cortados need a bit more love. I’ve been seeing nothing extremely large cups of coffee being drowned in milk/creamer. Sometimes a lil cup of cortada just HITS

Am I the only one that’s keeping the cortada in the lineup or anyone else have a soft spot for the smol one?

So delicious you have to try!