Honestly the best thing you can do is make sure everything is dated properly. It's the closers' job to make sure there's no expired products on bar, and if nothing is dated for them coming into the shift, it turns into a guessing game. That, and ensuring there are backups of lemonade/sweetcream/inclusions/frap roast is a time saver. Also just making sure everything is well stocked at the end of your shift so the closers aren't walking into a dumpster fire at mid. My store has morning/mid tasks (drains, ice bins, sinks, ovens, syrup stands) and it's no fun coming into a closing shift with stuff not done. I mostly close with the occasional open, so when I do open I'm always pretty conscientious about their job later on. It's great of you to care

One thing is doing dishes. Coming in to a 2 or 3 person close and there’s a literal mountain of dishes in the back means it takes one of the people out of commission to do them so we don’t end up staying an hour past close.

This is what CSR cards are for. opening and midday crew should do what's on the cards. You ssv team or your SM should modify the cards as needed so that work is shared fairly between different day parts.

Dishes, stocking, and at least somewhat clean surfaces

I appreciate you actually asking and not just having a “not my shift, not my problem” attitude

Taking out trash if you can!

i always close and so here are a few things that would really help for you guys to do. note, i get that the mornings are EXTREMELY busy, but if you do have some spare time, doing these would really help:
- DOING DISHES! // at night, we already have a lot of dishes to wash (essentially everything). i know it's hard to find time in the morning to do dishes when it's super busy, but if you have the time to do dishes, then please!!! the store (especially drive thru) is still open while we have to do all sorts of cleaning so it would help if we had less dishes to do. coming from a drive thru store, i've taken orders while doing dishes because we always have had so many dishes to wash.
- restocking supplies and prep // if you do have some time, please prep! we have so much cleaning to do, from the dishes to the floors -- and we still are opened. it would help if we didn't have to slow down cleaning by doing prep work or if we didn't have to do prep work while we are serving customers. also, it's really nice when you restock the supplies (lids/cups/syrups/toppings) before you clock out for your shift. it really sucks when we have to come in and nothing is restocked and so we have to constantly run to the back and get stuff while we have customers.
- taking out the trash // we do throw away a lot of things and we still have a lot of restocking to do by the end of the night. if the trash is full, then we have to do trash runs at night or before it gets dark. at my store, we aren't allowed to go outside and take out the trash when the sun isn't out (we do take some bags while we leave for the night). the trash bags pile up in the back and that not only makes it more difficult to clean, but it also causes you problems when you come in and see trash everywheinsteadre
- making a list of supplies or items we are out of // what really sucks about coming into a night shift (or even a mid shift) is coming in and not knowing what we do and don't have. at our store, we have whiteboards at the drive thru and front registers listing items we don't have (pastries, syrups, inclusions, etc.). it's really helpful to have these things because then we know what drinks can't sell. there have been so many times when i have accidentally sold things bc i wasn't aware of what we had and didn't have). it also saves us time from running to the back and checking if we have certain items)
- let us know what we can do to make opening easier // while we clean up for the day, tell us DIRECTLY what we should do for you guys. ive heard openers complain about us closers and not once have they told us how we can help with them. just let us know what we can add to our list of things to do so we can help out (it's super annoying if you guys just talk behind our backs). im currently switching from all closing shifts to all
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this isn't everything but generally speaking this is what you can do and why you should do these things (when you can)! hope it helps!!

Please do some dishes and a trash run!!! I don’t have enough fingers to count the number of times I’ve come in for a closing shift to find piles of dishes in the sink and bags of trash all over the floor.

Man fuck tarbux. My last day at mine is next Friday and it’s the best job to leave. As far as closing tips just do stuff that would’ve helped you as a closer at your tarbux.