Fun until is degrading - Cafe Specialist/Barista Barriques Employee Review

I loved it at Barriques. I worked at multiple locations over the years and filled in at others, and the team at every one was always a great group of people. As a queer person I always found team members and management to be queer friendly. During my time there tips were always generous enough to create a paycheck which was at least $14/hour. Felt proud of the quality of food and drink I was serving. Education was provided to create a good knowledge base of coffee, tea and food service. I am a "coffee snob" to this day because working here raised my standards. Owners and management worked to help people navigate unemployment during COVID shutdown.

I think my cons are likely not an issue anymore now that it is three years past the beginning of COVID. Right after COVID began, hours were scarce and the shifts you did have were often done alone due to business slowdowns. This was lonely and also frustrating when you rarely did get a rush with no backup team member. Owners weren't great at communication during restart (but was anyone any good at communicating right after Spring 2020?). My only general con is that sometimes it was difficult to communicate with people between shifts (in food service I've found there is always a bit of push/pull between the "morning" and "night" peeps), and the general managers at locations are stretched too thin with responsibilities that they have very little time to lend a hand in interpersonal issues. While Barriques culture encourages consistency, it can be difficult to get everyone even at one location on the same page at times. Ultimately, way more pros than cons and I would definitely recommend working there and go back if I could.

Great environment, great people, very fun job

Can get very busy at times, management suffers sometimes.