I currently work at a corporate and licensed store! I am a closer and by myself all the time.

1. You are not employed directly by Starbucks, in this case for me it is albertsons.
2. No free drinks, but unlimited free refills (iced coffee, teas, brewed coffee)
3. LESS busy, few rushes here and there but nothing compared to corporate.
4. Pay is sometimes higher depending on area
5. Taining is not the best, however, coming from a corporate sbux you should be good!
6. You don't have mobile orders or drive thru, YAY.
7. You don't pull stickers instead you write on the cup.
8. Dress code is more relaxed, atleast in my store I can get away with ONLY wearing the green apron.
9. If you end up closing, you will pretty much run your own shift and decide when to clean ovens, wash dishes, make prep etc.
10. There will be a smaller number amount of employees so try NOT to call in sick or miss work.

I worked at a Ralph’s Starbucks for a few months
1. Really relaxed dress code. As long as my jeans didn’t have hoes, it was fine. I wore pink, turquoise, and plaid patterned jeans without anybody raising a fuss.
2. My Ralph’s had a Union, and Starbucks was covered by it.
3. Minor rushes, but nothing compared to a corporate location. And I only got one TikTok drink working there.
4. No drive-thru, mobile orders, deliveries, or curbsides.
5. If you close, you can literally finish half of closing procedures about half an hour before you actually close.
6. You write on the cup/no stickers.
7. I got free drinks all the time! And a free food item every shift!
8. When I would close, I would make sure to set the opener up for an easy open. Made whips, made mocha, made vanilla sweet cream, made sure the fridge and cups were stocked, cleaned EVERYTHING down so the nagager wouldn’t get on the opener’s case if there was a spec of dust, and even put a tea bag in every pitcher so they wouldn’t have to pull out the stool to get them.

i currently work at a licensed store, inside of an upscale, fancy hotel!

•we’re allowed one free drink per shift

•idk how it is in other licensed/corporate stores, but i make $14/hour + tips!

•dress code is fairly strict, the hotel that my starbucks is in is downtown, has its majority fair share of the professional/fancy business people, from the court house workers that want their daily coffee, to the guests who are using one of the ballrooms in our hotel to host an event like a banquet or a wedding, so we have to dress business casual & look very professional.

•we have a decent sized team, about maybe 15 total baristas!

•our hours are different, on sundays we close at 4, fridays and saturdays we close at 8, and monday through thursday, we close at 6.

•we don’t have a sticker printer, we write orders on the cups.

•we don’t get any mobile orders like from the app, only grub hub and doordash.

•we can use the app for people who want to pay with a starbucks gift card, but we cannot redeem stars for any free items.

Hi! My store pays significantly less, has worse hours, and less benefits than a corporate store :D love that for us.

The benefit to me is that we are located in an extremely slow mall with no drive through. Which means less stress and everything is simpler. No drive thru times, less crazy Karens, no customer connection scores, looser dress code. We even have a smaller drink menu and have a different food distributor.

My cafe is inside a popular bookstore chain, we get 40% off all cafe and book purchases, which is a pretty good deal. Nothing free, but still good.

I worked at a Target Starbucks for 3 years. Keep in mind that the Target that I worked at was the busiest store in the area, so while others may have had a more chill experience, I def had a high volume of guests

Pros:
- as many refills as you’d like
- for a few years the pay was higher, but I think it’s even now with corporate? Not 100% sure.
- 10% Target discount LOL
- not as strict on when things have to be done, more of a “just make sure they’re done”
- smaller work area, which means less things to clean and it’s easier to navigate.
- my regulars were awesome. Despite all the Target moms I only had a few Karens, most were super chill and very nice.

Cons:
- often understaffed & if people call out then you’re SOL. I’ve worked an entire 8 hour shift by myself…. Twice.
- My store took hours away from our department to give to others. They can’t do that bc Starbucks allocates x amount of hours a week for us, but HR didn’t care.
- I went through 3 Team Leads in my time there. 2 of them had no idea what they were doing. It was me and another girl running the entire show, just without the credit or pay of doing so.
- no free drinks
- strict dress code: visor, solid black or white collared shirt, blue jeans, black shoes. Did I listen? No. But that was the rule.
- no tips :(

Honestly it depends on who your higher ups are. You’re working under Target AND Starbucks standards so there’s a lot to do. I filled in for someone at another store and the manager there was so kind and told me that I can do whatever I want whenever I need, and if I need help she’d be right there. At my store they were very much like, you don’t actually need help if I don’t acknowledge that you need help. Also if you’re coming from corporate you’re going to see that a lot of (but not all) baristas have no idea what they’re doing. That gets frustrating.

I worked at a Fred Meyer Starbucks for about 5 months and just started working at a corporate location. So far my experience with the two has been super different!

1. There's less staff at licensed stores, at mine we typically worked alone for the majority of our shift or there were only two of us

2. We got the Fred Meyer benefits & discounts, which included 10% off Starbucks stuff, but that applied to all Fred Meyer employees

3. Depending on where you work, the Starbucks rewards program might have different rules (at mine customers could only use stars for drinks and food, no merchandise so we had to deal with ppl being mad that they couldn't use stars for cups)

4. The dress code is definitely more relaxed than it is at corporate stores (in my experience they don't care about nails, several of my coworkers had acrylics)

Also idk if anyone knows the reason for this but my Fred Meyer location got way more cups than corporate stores, and it was the really popular cups too, like the black studded ones. We'd have people coming from all over the place just to get cups at our store cause they weren't anywhere else. Do licensed and corporate stores have different order systems/suppliers or was my location just lucky??

I currently work in a Randall’s store and it sucks. I don’t know how much of it is Randall’s sucking vs the actual kiosk sucking, but it’s a shitshow.

1. No free anything. No mark out system, no discount unless they’re customer/Randall’s For U discounts, no exceptions.

2. Horrific under training. The higher-ups managing the store had NO idea how the Starbucks works, and I was trained with the barista basics book ONLY. No learning cards, no tastings, no skill checks, nothing. They had me opening by myself on my 4th shift and I didn’t even know how to steam milk. (If you’re already trained this shouldn’t be an issue, but know that your coworkers may have not been trained well)

3. Physical recipe cards, no iPad, physical resource binder. Be careful where you put that recipe book, the pages get sticky real fast and suddenly they’re not readable anymore.

4. Handwriting cups, no printer.

5. My store does not accept mobile orders, though we do occasionally get a doordasher who gamed the system somehow.

6. The general clientele of the store is going to be your clientele as well. If you work in a bookstore, you’ll probably have a more chill group of customers. If you work in a Randall’s it’s a bunch of old folk who get crabby real fast.

7. You’ll probably be working either by yourself or with only one other barista. With the size of the kiosk, having more than 2 baristas might get cramped, but be prepared to be very busy. You will need to know every station.

8. People will come in and ask for things you don’t have. My kiosk doesn’t have an oven, so we can’t do sandwiches or heat anything up. This makes people angry. I haven’t found a way to make them not angry, and most of the time they just leave.

Honestly the biggest issues stem from the store management not knowing the resources a Starbucks needs to function and expecting things we can’t provide. They want us to be selling way more than we are, but if we’re out of decaf for 4 days then we’re out of the main things our customers buy. It’s rough.

Grocery store kiosk-

*Can def be understaffed. For a while we only had three employees, one being a minor

*Lackluster training. So many wrong recipes, no idea about clean plays or CS cycle, etc. Turning around now because I'm taking charge

*Often alone. I've worked open-close 14 hours solo before but it was voluntary

*Very strict dress code. Black collared shirts required, black gray or blue sweaters allowed

*Make good money and have a union, allowed to take tips

*Can't scan qr codes and have limited food options which makes customers Unhappy ™

*For all the issues I honestly love it but it's so store by store basis. My store director is amazing and very committed to us improving and recognizing our hard work, and the employees from the other departments are friendly and love having a Starbucks in store so they're super nice to have as our daily regulars

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