The Roasterie Cafe

The Roasterie Café is on fire! In witnessing our staff, I get the same feeling as I do while watching my kids do new and awesome things. I am so proud and amazed at the same time.
It’s all about having the ‘who’…then the ‘what’. That is, having the right folks on the bus; then, worrying about where they’re sitting. If you have the wrong people on the bus, then it doesn’t matter where they sit…it’s not going to work. And if you have the right people to begin with…they don’t care where they sit. They’re just happy and grateful to be on such an awesome bus!
We’ve been open in Brookside for about three and a half years and I thought that we’d open with the kind of team, camaraderie, and culture that we have now. But as my more experienced friends told me, it takes time. Our staff right now oozes positive mojo and this is reflected in everything that they do. They smile, joke and laugh with customers and knock out awesome tasting (and looking) drinks. Our customer satisfaction scores have been running so high that they look false!
When we first opened, the staff had complained about the tips and we had a frank discussion about this. I said that there was not a clearer, more direct line between our service and how the customer feels about that service…than the tip jar. As our service improved, so did their tips, hitting $7/hr. on a recent shift.
A couple of weeks ago I was trying to pull the lessons, the ‘secrets’ from Carla, our store manager, about the store’s success. I told her that we wanted to apply the key lessons learned to the roasting plant. She said that she and her staff had discussed it…and that it was simply having the right people on the bus and the ‘wrong’ people off. Unhappy people had to go somewhere else and when that happened…magic occurred. They did almost two thousand drinks one day a couple of weeks ago and the staff was shocked when they found out. They said that while they knew it was busy, it all went so smoothly and everyone worked so well together that it was easy.
Here’s to our awesome team at Roasterie Café…and having the right people on the bus! And if you like it now, just wait till you see the new expansion and remodel…lots of excitement in the months aheadJ.!
If you like what we do and feel so inclined, please vote for us for Kansas City’s Magazine “Best Coffee Shop” at

http://citysbest.midwestluxe.com/.

Thank you,

Danny O’Neill
Bean Baron
The Roasterie, inc.