I did but SBUX is very different today. When I did, there was more overlap in skills. Today, nearly everything you learned at Starbucks isn’t applicable outside of Starbucks. The siren purposely custom designs everything from equipment to ingredient mixes.

Back in the day, most cafe operators I knew purposely didn’t hire ex-bux employees. Personally, I know it’s easier to take someone from zero coffee knowledge and train them into a competent barista than it is to take someone that thinks they are already a barista (because they worked at Starbucks) and train them to work at a real, conventional cafe on real espresso machines in a real cafe environment.

One edge you do have is customer service skills, sales skills, and sticking to SOPs, provided your store isn’t a disaster.

yes, i loved it while i was there. ofc i’m into coffee so some of the stuff wasn’t new to me, but starbucks is definitely different from small shops, especially since most starbucks have automatic espresso machines now, so you’ll have to learn different techniques for steaming milk (regulating the temperature, aerating is different, etc) and of course you’ll learn how to pull espresso shots and prepare the puck, dialing in the espresso, etc. all the fun stuff.

pay was actually $11 an hour plus tips, at the time i got $12 at sbux so it wasn’t bad bc tips were evenly spread between the two on shift. hours were pretty much guaranteed 20+ each week since the staff is smaller, so i got like 25 hours each week. the environment is also a lot nicer since we could wear whatever so i was always really comfortable and the aprons were less plasticky than starbucks aprons, i didn’t have a personal apron but they let us bring in our own apron if we had one which was cool!

i work at a drive thru starbucks so yes, definitely slower. the entire time i was there it was super slow, and the customers were so nice. i kept hearing the ding of the drive thru and being so happy no one can order in a drive thru there. yay!

but be warned there are some sketchy small shops. when i worked at a small shop, my image and skill was taken advantage of and they called me lazy because i refused to clean a kitchen which needed professional cleaning, so always stand up for yourself and leave immediately if you start noticing red flags.

btw, i did all the opening and closing, always cleaned every single spot in the shop, kept track of inventory and fifoed and put away shipments. and i did all of the chalk marker artwork. so yeah, they called me lazy for that. (they erased all of the work i did, but keep posting an a-frame sign i designed on their instagram 😭 i asked them to take it down and they blocked me.)

seriously go for it! 99% of coffee shops care about their employees, my experience was wonderful but tragic and im definitely looking into applying at different shops at the moment!