Question

You own a local coffee shop and your senior barista, whom everyone loves and has been with you for 6 years, just informed you that she will be leaving soon as she has decided to move to a different city.  

You are considering hiring a junior person and training them as a barista knowing that they will make mistakes on customer orders, or you can hire an experienced barista at a higher wage that has a great resume and references.  

Knowing the lifetime value of a customer what should the coffee shop owner do?

Apply common sense logic to your answer.

Select one:

a. You, the owner, are a qualified barista and to save money you have decided to take on that part of the coffee shop.

b. Offer the job to the junior person, because you are gambling they will do a good job eventually

c. Offer the job to the experienced barista.

d. Change your focus from specialty coffee to just brewed coffee, tea and additional food options, avoiding the need to hire a barista.

Answer 1

The best alternative is to hire a qualified barista, because of follwing reason.

(i) There is no risk of sudden fluctuation in the customer service standards, which is most vital factor to maintain in highly competitive marketplace. Even if few customers decide to switch to competition, the cost of losing them and acquiring new ones would be much higher than the wage difference in the long run.

(ii) A new person would take its time to train and get acquainted with the systems of shop. It is also possible that he /she might not work as expected and this would lead to another round of hiring. This would incur costs, not to speak of disruptions again.It will also affect the customer's opinion of shop. With experienced barista, this scenario is less likely to happen.

Option c is right