Starbucks Baristas: The daily grind
↑
70
↓
Starbucks needs to figure out their quality control (self.starbucksbaristas)
submitted by Animuthrowawayplz
One of our two espresso machines broke down last night, it kept saying the hopper was empty and needed beans when it was full. The only beans to actually pull was decaf. That wasn't the only thing that went wrong to make this morning hard, but it was the biggest part of it. The guy came in a little before noon to fix our machine. He's taking the hopper off, vacuuming it out, and looking inside with his phone light.
​
He pulled out a chunk of wood. Not just one. After the first chunk he tried the machine and it still wasn't working so he starting opening it up to look inside and there's an even bigger chunk. My shift says afterwards that he's noticed chunks of what looked like wood in our 5 lb bags of beans and didn't realize the espresso had them too.
​
In what world does WOOD in BEAN bags pass quality control? Anyone else have anything like this happening?
​
He pulled out a chunk of wood. Not just one. After the first chunk he tried the machine and it still wasn't working so he starting opening it up to look inside and there's an even bigger chunk. My shift says afterwards that he's noticed chunks of what looked like wood in our 5 lb bags of beans and didn't realize the espresso had them too.
​
In what world does WOOD in BEAN bags pass quality control? Anyone else have anything like this happening?
PauseAccording20 31 points 1y ago
When I worked at David’s tea we would get the occasional feather or string in a bag of tea but we were much more slow paced and we could isolate that bag/lot of tea and put in a quality control ticket and go from there. That’s insane, we as baristas literally don’t have time for that it’s grab and go, this is 100% a problem and health hazard wtf
Animuthrowawayplz [OP] 6 points 1y ago
Exactly! If we weren't pushing for being quicker than realistically possible, it'd be easier to catch these things. Even then, this is something that they should catch.
DamnitDean 13 points 1y ago
Hm wood in the bags sounds like a proper way to kill some grinder burrs, tiny rocks are also common in beans, which will destroy the grinder. Last night I actually dealt with the same thing, the machine saying hopper empty while it was mostly full. I just topped it off as much as I can and it worked afterwards - possibly a malfunctioning scale system? Regardless, Starbucks does need to up quality control - wood or rocks in beans that get chucked into a grinder ever few minutes is unacceptable.
Animuthrowawayplz [OP] 2 points 1y ago
It's happened before and usually someone will take the hopper off and vacuum the machine out and then put the hopper back on and it will work. The person who did it this time didn't see the wood in it.
I hadn't heard of rocks. That's scary. With how expensive our machines are, you'd think starbucks would be more on top of it.
I hadn't heard of rocks. That's scary. With how expensive our machines are, you'd think starbucks would be more on top of it.
Stinkinfection 9 points 1y ago
Our DT bar hasn’t been able to turn on for days and they still haven’t sent anyone out to service it :’)
Animuthrowawayplz [OP] 2 points 1y ago
Oof, that sucks. It was only down for a day for us and we really felt it. I hope you get someone to your store soon for it.
philosopher_cat_lady 4 points 1y ago
It's from how fucked up Starbucks' manufacturing is right now. There have been lots of manufacturing errors
ColeSwasey 2 points 1y ago
Had a wood chunk in a cold brew bag once. It fortunately didn't pass through our grinder.
This nonprofit website is run by volunteers.
Please contribute if you can. Thank you!
Our mission is to provide everyone with access to large-
scale community websites for the good of humanity.
Without ads, without tracking, without greed.
scale community websites for the good of humanity.
Without ads, without tracking, without greed.
©2023 HumbleCat Inc • HumbleCat is a 501(c)3 nonprofit based in Michigan, USA.