Hiring Employees for Your Tea Shop

Hire the right personality for the job. Don’t hire shy people to serve customers. But hire them! Use them for gift wrappers, window display designers, marketing and displaying of merchandise, Internet orders, shipping, and/or creating gift baskets.

Hire outgoing personalities for sales clerks, wait staff, cashiers, and answering the phone, but make sure they’re putting your business’s interests before their need to be the center of attention. The focus, as always, should be on the customer.

Get referrals from like-minded sources, including culinary schools for cooking and wait staff, discreet signs in your shop window to attract dedicated customers, current employees for seasonal positions, and local vendors.

Don’t just interview, audition everyone. Resumes are essential for checking references (which you must!) and getting basic information, but for servers, sales staff, or display staff, audition them! Provide a few examples to demonstrate their functionality. Are they quick and neat, slow and sloppy? Hire the person with innate creativity and a penchant for neatness.

Show a potential server your typical table service, then ask them to take an order, serve, and clear the table. Are they graceful and careful? Do they know the service protocol?l Use handwritten orders? Can the chef read their handwriting? Use a tablet or similar device? Can they easily pick up the technology? It probably shouldn’t have to be mentioned, but are they clean and neat from hair to shoes?

For sales clerks, explain the variety of teas or gift items you sell. Do they seem interested? Do they know how to operate scales for weight and the tablets or registers for sales? Ditto for credit card machines.

If you’re a high-end coffee roaster or own a fine restaurant, finding hires that appreciate coffee is legion, but are these new hires willing to learn about the artisanal or single-estate teas you offer? Give them a sample tasting to test their palate and their appreciation. Hire mature workers. They’re reliable, knowledgeable, and they’ll show up on time and stay until the job is done.

Get the word out in a targeted way. Hire local. Friends love to visit shops where friends work. Opt for personal and business contacts for referrals, unless you need hundreds of hires. Also, consider social media! Check those references! (Can’t say it often enough.)

Train well. During the interview and audition process, determine the potential of your hires. Even the most experienced employee needs to understand how your business works and what you expect of them. That means training. Train new hires on any equipment that they will use daily and have them practice sales execution. Determine if they need more training and for what tasks. Note the new hire’s attitude when they’re corrected.

Partner each new hire with an established employee. This mentee/mentor relationship takes the slack off you answering every single question that comes up. Your established employees will soon discover if you have self-starters/quick learners.

Ask potential hires to observe your business in action. (A half or full hour after the initial interview would work.) If your pace aligns with their capabilities, great. If not, it’s best to learn that immediately.

Be clear about company standards for behavior, dress codes, schedules, days off, and how long the seasonal hire will last. Some employers no longer allow personnel to use cellphones during work hours, only during lunchtime or breaks. Make sure employees understand your policy, if you have one. Put this information on a poster in the employee bathrooms and employee break rooms.

Be specific about what you expect of them. Describe a successful employee. Discuss perks, if you offer them, like inventory discounts, meals, parking, public transportation discounts, insurance, payment schedule, and of course, hourly rates or salaries. Be clear if you’re flexible or limited about scheduling.

Discuss up front whether or not this is a permanent hire or a temporary position. Put everything in writing, and give a copy of your “What to Expect When You Work for Us” to every new hire.