Thank you for calling Green Apron Stories, this is Sue Matra. How can I help you?

As a recently let go partner and new contributor to Green Apron Stories, I felt I needed to have my first post here be something to remember. I could tell stories of my last day experience. I could go on about how I was caught off guard, not treated as a person, not even offered help with the things they boxed up for me. I could tell you how offended and hurt this made me feel after 8 years of staying late and devoting my life and giving my loyalty to the Big Green Bean. But I’m not going to. I’ll simply do this:

The picture above is a photo of the front door to the Starbucks SSC. If you enter this door, you’ll see three elevators. You can take any one of them up to the 8th floor receptionist. If you do this at around 8:30 on a Monday morning, you’ll be sure to be accompanied by many busy partners. Just follow them. Some will beep their badges at the glass door that will be on your right as you exit the elevator. Just act like you know what you’re doing and walk with them.

You’ll notice a lovely display as you cross the threshold. Starbucks current marketing, mugs, coffee bags, etc. It’s quite impressive. You’ll notice a long set of winding stairs to your right. These will take you to the 9th floor. Don’t bother going there. You’ll continue straight, just to the right of the staircase. In about 15 steps, you’ll come to a magnificent cafe-like breakroom on your right. Help yourself to a coffee cup from the cupboard. Hell, make yourself a caramel machiatto with extra caramel.

When you have your beverage, walk out of the other door. Out towards the well-lit, open and airy common area with the large banners and the mature coffee plants to the right. You should see two sets of 4 comfy chairs there. Have a seat. Look up. Pretty huh? Ok. Stand up. Walk North a bit and you’ll see two hallways. Take the left one and walk until you see another small breakroom on your right. Don’t go in. Just walk a few more steps to the copy room, which will also be on your right. Don’t go in there either. Just walk two more steps until you can make a right and see many rows of cubicles. Walk a few steps and take a left down the aisle. You’ll see what looks to be a row of fancy offices. This is called “Executive Row”.

Have fun and tell them Sue Matra sent ya.

Love,
Sue Matra
(8 year partner and recently promoted to another coffee company’s customer)

Thank you for calling Green Apron Stories. How can I help you?

I have asked Pat to share a little about the last year. So, as a kick off to the next era of Green Apron Stories, we thought it would be appropriate to bring you “An interview with Pat Nerr”

GAS: Hey Pat. Thanks for the honor of owning this space and for your time.

PN: My pleasure.

GAS: So let’s go back a bit. Tell us how the idea for Green Apron Stories came about?

PN: OK… So here’s the background. From 2004-2007 I worked on some of the company’s first eLearning projects and in 2006, I came up with the idea for Pat Nerr (partner). He/She (purposefully gender ambiguous) originally, the concept was meant to be an idea that could be an enhancement to the Green Apron Book…writing blog posts to partners about things that go on in the stores. Talking about new promotions, policies, events and writing about them in an interesting way so as to encourage employee engagement. My original idea for Pat was to also be a teacher of the culture and historical things that just never get documented or passed on. Pat was also meant to publish quizzes and promote internal contests. I worked on a couple of concepts but there was no support for it. Needless to say, I saw a few things and overheard a few other things that prompted me to leave the company. Knowing that this concept would be a good learning experience and knowing that after 15 years, I would need some time to reflect… Green Apron Stories started it’s flight.

GAS: I think I started the reading it by the 2nd week. So you came up with all of the content and wrote the stories?

PN: For the first month… yes, I was the principle writer. After that, a former store manager and a current store manager helped with some of the writing. I toyed with the idea of having the other two writers contribute under different character names, but decided that Pat Nerr was to be the “every partner’… It took a fair bit of editing their ideas to make them “Pat Nerr”.

GAS: What do you mean?

PN: Well… Pat Nerr has a particular style of writing. The “…” trailing thought is one item. Of course, the use of “Good Morning. What can I get for you?”… and other subtleties.

GAS: Ahh. Gotcha. So, what was your favorite story?

PN: Oh man. That’s a tough question. I like some of the different stories for different reasons. Going off of the page hits, I’d have to say that the post on “Competition” was the most popular and commented on. I recently went back and read from beginning to end and it’s interesting to try and remember where my head and emotions were sometimes. The post on Starbucks Definitions was also popular.

GAS: But what was YOUR favorite post to write?

PN: Since I have to pick one… The December 31^st post on what Starbucks needs to do to turn their situation around. I wrote them as predictions because at that point, I had heard that Uncle Howie himself was reading regularly. Of course, if you go back to it it nearly reads like a prophecy… I’ll always wonder if the ideas were considered.

GAS: You are kidding right? The man at the top was reading?

PN: No joke. Not many people know this, but there were some alarms going off when I started writing. P&AP spent some time doing their “research”. There was a concern at one point that I was threatening Howard himself. Of course, we all know that this isn’t true. Then there was a concern that I was trying to rally the stores to unionize… It all seems funny to me. There was also an immediate effort to identify every partner in the SSC who I knew and monitor their e-mail.

GAS: Did Howard or any of the leadership ever call you or e-mail you to let you know they were concerned?

PN: Well… Nope. I never got anything from Howie. Chet e-mailed me a few times. Initially just to offer up some stories about his predecessor and then to chit chat. Funny part is… If Howie had called me or e-mailed me to ask me to tone it down or stop… I would have. I did send him a note at one point… no reply of course.

GAS: Whoa! The EVP of HR e-mailed you. Can you share what the e-mail said?

PN: Maybe some other time. I think the purpose was to try and smoke out the people around me so they could fire them. As we know now, the plan was to lay off people so I can only assume that it was a good excuse to get rid of folks without having to pay severance. I can’t imagine why someone at that level would be e-mailing me offering up dirt on one of their colleagues. Let’s move on…

GAS: Ok, ok. So tell me about the readership of Green Apron Stories. What was the daily readership like?

PN: I was surprised to see how quickly the web hits grew in the first 2 months. I’d say that 35% of the readers were from Starbucks own corporate networks. At least two people from the Pentagon were regular readers. All of the major news networks. After the post about Tully’s there was a blow up from their corporate network which didn’t surprise me. At the peak, I was seeing 9,000 to 10,000 hits on average. I was mildly surprised at the number of hits from the Starbucks networks and the amount of time they spent reading… regularly hitting 3+ pages while they were there.

GAS: That doesn’t surprise me. I was a regular reader while I was there and we frequently laughed about the content. Which brings me to my next question. What was up with the videos?

PN: The videos? Most of the ideas for the videos were just embellishments on reality or an attempt to entertain SSC folks. Most of the concepts were “inside jokes”. Here’s a funny story on the “Papal” video… One of my old store partners, who still works as a barista mind you, and I were having beers and came up with the idea. The idea that Jim Donald was the Pope and Howie as a Cardinal… needless to say over the course of two more beers, we had the script. Since I had my laptop with me, we started making the artwork and by the time we left it was nearly done… So that video was made at the “Wingdome”… The videos on iTunes were fun too. Mostly… the videos were for fun.

GAS: Time to get serious on you. What disappoints you most about what’s been going down at the company?

PN: I think the way people have been treated. I heard Howard talk about there being a “poison” in the well… and most found it easy to assume that somebody like me would be a “poison”… I think the poison has been trickling down from the top. If you look at some of the departed execs of recent days… you can see a trend. People like Greg Johnson… Weldon Spangler… Christine Day… Jim Alling. Those folks were decent and caring. It’s obvious that there is no place for them in the current Starbucks. They were legendary in their leadership. I think it also disappointing when the actions of a few can destroy so much for so many in such a short amount of time…

GAS: Do you still frequent Starbucks as a customer?

PN: Naw… My boy likes Caffe Ladro. We do our espresso/hot cocoa outings there. It’s quirky and comfortable and the people there work like baristas should… crafting espresso by hand.

GAS: Your thoughts on the idea that the economy has created Starbucks issues?

PN: I think that’s hilarious! First off, Starbucks has always thought of themselves as “recession proof”… and I think that they were for the most part… under most circumstances… but you pair what’s happening with people’s homes, and the cost of gas aggravating everything else… and you have a serious situation with the average American being tapped out on their spending power. American debt is max’d out. They can’t put their Starbucks on their credit cards any longer. They’d rather spend that 4-5 bucks on a Happy Hour drink. Then you look at how Starbucks has spent their money internally… there’s quite a bit of waste. Instead of blowing money on things that never were attached to any business drivers, they should have been investing in infrastructure and preparing for the lean times. Howard always says “we’re in the early chapters…” Well, this must be the tragic chapters and I only hope it’s a happy ending.

GAS: OK. Last question for now. What do you think the fate of Starbucks will be?

PN: Funny that you would ask ME that. I used to think they would just sell out and Howard would take his money and run. Now… I think they really believe they can turn it around and create what it used to be… I find this sad. So I guess my answer would be that they’ll just meander around trying to guess what the next trend is and struggle as Tully’s has done for so long.

GAS: Thanks for your time Pat.

Many of you know that Pat has graciously handed over the reigns to a group of us to manage Green Apron Stories. While the site layout and logistics may change, it will still maintain the same purpose. While the transfer was taking place, I spent some time talking with Pat. Look forward to the interview sometime this week.

On a business note, there is much buzz about Starbucks decision to halt the salary increases for its’ executives. To put this in perspective for the rest of you partners, here is the salary reports for FY 2008. As a recently laid off partner, I can’t say that I feel bad considering the some of the severance packages that I’ve seen.

• Howard Schultz - $1, 200,000
• Chet Kuchinad - $900,000
• Martin Coles - 1,000,000

Sorry if the average Joe partners don’t feel bad. How will they make ends meet? More importantly, how will they be able to shake the hands of those partners they meet and interact with?

We hope you like where this will go. Now sit back, grab a cup of coffee and enjoy as the stories unfold right before your very eyes. These are The Green Apron Stories.

I think it’s time to re-post a popular post. The timing is right… the message is relevant… the training session is over.

Good morning… What can I get for you?

Well as promised I’m gonna share some insight I had as the manager at my 5th store with Starbucks. Now, this is the same store where we had the Tully’s competition just to put this in perspective.

My first day at the store in this story was to say the least, a manager’s nightmare. Folks out of dress code, 8 out of 10 show up late for their shifts (a few as little as 10 minutes and a couple as much as an hour). Drink standards were clearly out of whack, customer service was hit and miss, cash handling was off, the store was dirty and had filth in every corner, we had a pest problem, inventories were way off… the list goes on…

So where to start?

Scheduling:
Well, that first day (and week really)… I just took it all in. The schedule for the next week was left for me… nice… so I stayed late and paid for each of my shifts from each shift to stay and advise me on what makes the store run from a schedule/partner POV. I worked that first week, open to close (4:15am to 10:30pm) So, yes… the first part was for me to bring the schedules up to standard… 2 weeks posted at a minimum. I knew there would be changes, but I wanted to do my part first so I could ask others to do their part. I’ll skip the many schedule interactions as they don’t add to the story

Customer Service:
The store had Customer Snapshot scores in the 60%-70% range, so I knew this was low hanging fruit for turning other things around. It was clear that we needed a store meeting. Now there was no assistant manager at this 7-day a week store and no RMT, so I used my shift sups to help me promote the idea that we would get 4 partners from another store to work our close so we could have a “team dinner”… i.e. a cleverly disguised team meeting. So… I took them to dinner. And I poured my heart into them… i.e., I tried to scare the crap out of them.

The Speech:
“Thanks for coming everyone… I feel like I need to be frank with you all. Starbucks corporate called me today to say the store is in danger of being closed if we don’t get a handle on our store operations and turn things around. Our comps are in the negative, customer comments are pathetic and Snapshot scores are really weak. We have a chance to show Starbucks that this is a great store and more importantly, we can show ourselves and our customers.”

Some partners cried, others rose their hands, some sat in silence.

Partner 1: Holy crap! Are we gonna be out on the street?

Pat Nerr: I’m afraid that’s the bad news… the good news is that we can fix it… and I know how.

Partner 2: How?? We have the crappiest Snapshots, the store is a mess, partners are late for shifts… no wonder they’re gonna close us.

Pat Nerr: First, we all have to agree to care that this place is more than just a job. Second, we have to fix our customer service. Third, we have to fix the quality of our drinks and presentation. The rest of it will fix itself and you’re gonna have to trust me on this. Now, I’d like to keep my job as I have almost 8 years invested at this company, so here’s how important it is to me…

The Promise:
Pat Nerr: I’m going to pledge my bonus as the carrot to make you guys care. I’m going to pledge you my knowledge of how to run the best store we can. I’m going to pledge you that I care… about all of it. You, the store, the customers. I’m counting on you to make it all happen… and I’m going to be here the whole time.

Partner 3: So how much money are we talking here?

Pat Nerr: OK… First I want to say that I’ll use whatever bonus I make to throw you a party. We’ll have roughly $1,700 to spend on one night of fun. I’ll even let you decide how and where we spend it.

What Next?:
Well, certainly this stirred up some excitement. But I knew there was much to do and these folks needed direction. So we posted the goals in the back room… prominently. Just 3…

1. Get 3 Customer Snapshots over 95%…
2. Enthusiastically Satisfy Every Customer… Every Time…
3. Comp 10% for one entire quarter

All sorts of things happened. It might help to tell you that the generational makeup of the store looked like this… 78% age 16-19, 20% age 20-25, 10% age 26-45 and 2% age 45+. You can imagine the dynamic… but it’s the cards I was dealt. For instance, we had issues with folks being “ill/hungover” for work on Saturdays… so that meant tardiness or “no shows”. We fixed that by having a family meeting that included parents of these kids. Most if not all had no idea that underage drinking was preventing their kids from making it to work on Saturday. Surprisingly, all of the parents then became Saturday morning customers. But the Saturday woes didn’t end there. It was so busy from open till close that partners hated working Saturdays. So, I worked them…

What did I learn? I learned that we we’re physically understaffed. We took a risk and just scheduled 2 extra partners… one to work a register and drive transactions and the other as a bar support person. Not to stop there, I brought in my griddle and made folks either pancakes or grilled sandwiches to feed them… we all voted an MVP every Saturday. The MVP got to leave 15 minutes early or choose to give it to someone else. These things became legendary. They also made working Saturday an asset and not a liability.

I remember one particular Saturday when double-barring with a 16 year-old kid named Kevin.

Kevin: How the heck do I “enthusiastically satisfy” people while I’m slammed on the bar?

Pat Nerr: Well, Kevin, I’m not gonna lie buddy… it’s hard. I can show you what I do if you want…

Kevin: Sure…

Pat Nerr: OK… when you lid every hot beverage, line up the drink hole with the logo on the cup and hand the drink out with the logo facing out. Then you watch their face… they’ll hone in on that logo every time. That’s when you say, “Hey, have a great day!” It’s basic branding… you make sure that every customer attaches that logo with the feeling they get by being told to have a great day. Make sure that cup is pristine too.

15 minutes later…

Kevin: Oh my god. That totally works! Who taught you all this stuff?

Pat Nerr: I learned it here man… and the great part is, you can use it on your next job and so on. It’s a powerful tool, so never forget it.

So, Des… I hope I’
ve convinced you that it can be done. You can make partners care. First, you have to care… you have to care so much that you’re willing to do just about anything to achieve the goal… whatever that is for your team.

What happened to that store? Well, they made the goal… no joke. Three 100% Snapshots, Store comps 12.4% and I decided to give them the 3rd because it was a filler goal anyway… and there’s power in doing things in 3’s. It didn’t stop either after the quarter… they kept going. We made highest profit percentage in the company that year…

You can take what you want from this story… there’s lots in it. Provide your people carrots that matter… Power in numbers… play to your strengths… fulfill your employees basics needs first… whatever. If you try something, watch it work… if it doesn’t, shoot it and try something else. When it does work, cherish it… cuz it can go away as quickly as it came. Oh yeah… and nothing lasts forever.

We’ll see you tomorrow for your usual…

Pat Nerr…

Is the company good now?? All ‘trained’ up?? I heard some sessions were good… others not so much. Aside from getting the entire company in the same room to roll out the info from the same person… it doesn’t surprise me that some rolled it out better than others…

Onward??

Nat Perr…

GET ‘EM WHILE THEY’RE HOT!!!!

Good morning… What can I get for you?

In a time of slaughtering even the sacred cows, there sure are a lot of circa “planning for growth” ex-Starbucks players making their way back into the fold. Perhaps it’s a class reunion of sorts… You know… guy gets old… starts to remember what it was like to play basketball when he was in his 20’s… wants to rekindle that loving feeling with an old flame… then he looks down and discovers a potbelly… and some wrinkles… and he can’t get it up anymore without assistance (by “it” I mean store sales).

Yes… Starbucks is officially in a mid-life crisis.

I can’t help but daydream of the behind the scenes conference calls and conversations that have taken place in local Seattle hot spots… the wining… the dining… the talk of old times… then the awkward silence as someone says… “Hey, if I paid you a Porsche-load, would you come back? I’m in a bit of a pinch.” Oh, how many bottles of the HS private collection of Petrvs have been uncorked to tantalize some big names from Starbucks past? How many sips of the Vin Santo followed by biscotti bites have taken place in the last few months to help set the stage for recovering the feel that Starbucks once was.

Still… Rubinfeld is a great choice. It was a huge loss when he was gone and now is coming back to help… perhaps to help the SSC partners who are still awaiting some specifics on how to accomplish the promises of The Great One… C’mon… look around folks… there’s still a couple of roles that will be filled soon… can YOU guess who they are? And no… it’s not the little man on 6 with a “talent” of “managing” to stay around without actually producing anything.

On a side note… Tomorrow the company will spend around 8 million in labor while producing no dollars in sales for 3 hours to give the company’s sales and service the “breast lift” it needs to pull more customers in… Now that’s how you lipsticking the pig…

We’ll see you sometime for something…

Pat Nerr…

more to come on this issue…

..I. *$

Pat Nerr…

There’s a poll for you on the right… It’s completely scientific and comes straight from the useful folks that bring you the Partner Spew Survey…

Perhaps the company can do something with THIS data…

WOO HOO!!! ..I.

Now that’s how you polling!