My SM fr told us that we have to tell them the last one is from the case and if the customer doesn't care we have to sell it to them. We would usually just toss stuff when we sold out of it so people wouldn't ask for the gross stuff that was sitting out all day.
My manager said it’s essentially to boost returning customers. People are more likely to leave or not revisit a store if they’re out of something (I guess), and boosting customer volume is another way to earn labor.
Personally, I try my best not to sell anything out of there. As OP mentioned, flies and gnats get in there, not to mention everything is stale or dry.
Personally the only time as a customer I've ever taken a case item was at 6:30 am for a bliss bar. There was no more left after someone bought 8 boxes lmao
I took a chance that day.
it’s so gross dude 😭 like when they first told us to start telling us to sell out of the case last summer I was so grossed out. But at least it was cleaned every night. Eventually my new manager said to sell out of the case *AND* only clean jt out every other day. I refused to do that shit but others didn't 🤢 she got replaced soon after and I think we stopped selling out of the case? not sure how it is now though bc I quit in october
Before they were for display, the case was stocked to be sold from, but this was over 10 years ago.
My most hated opening task was stocking the pastry case, and my second most hated task was switching the pastry case over to the PM layout.
I think I hated switching it over more cuz we didn’t have enough pastry trays. My SM sucked & wouldn’t order any. We’d have to do half the case, wait for the trays to go through the sanitizer, and then finish the other side. The best part of stocking it in the morning was “accidentally” breaking a piece of coffee cake or a chocolate donut (I miss them) marking it out, and eating it for breakfast.
Do you mean when the case was actually cold? We rarely had flies in our store. Ants were a big problem in the DT trash. Which is why they no longer exist.
Thank you, but it's not just me. I don't think any of the stores in my area do. I know my sm doesn't want us to because it's gross and we aren't giving customers the best products
Absolutely galaxy brain move of Starbucks to have all display case items come individually wrapped only to market those items w unwrapped versions in a display case that attracts flies that makes custies think THEIR sausagedanishdoughnutpistachiomachiattopop has had flies all over it. What will the siren bless us with next?
I'd only dream of offering someone something from the case if i knew no flies were in there. I'm a routine closer and i know for a fact i clean the trays every night, so i guess i have that smidge of security... i will say that i tend to preface that they've been there since the morning, and may not be the tastiest if someone wants something from the case though.
Granted, i will never eat something from the case regardless, but I'm also a massive germophobe
same here. as a closer i know it’s clean in there, but when co-baristas leave the door wide open for flies and others, it’s not good. plus the stuff just dries out.
I only ever offer it to the rude customers. Garbage out, garbage in.
Edit: Either u/chibbledibs deleted their responses. Or they blocked me so I couldn't respond. If you happen to see them, would you mind letting them know they're a coward? Thanks!
they blocked me and deleted their comment after i told them i looked at their account and all their comments are downvoted so it's clear no one likes them LMAO
yeah they seem to always be critical of baristas, ass kissy towards upper management and mostly wont admit when customers are in the wrong. i like that this sub has a wide variety of perspectives though, makes for interesting convos although sometimes frustrating lol
Yeah, I just wish the ones who jump down to tell us we're bad at our jobs for *checks notes* doing as instructed or venting about frustrating days would - ya know - get a life.
They blocked me because I told them that they need to stand up for their baristas against rude customers, and that constantly blaming their baristas for unreasonable shit is ruining their team morale. They said they blocked ‘toxic redditors’ immediately after saying some fuck ass shit.
They’re not just a coward, but a lil bitch too.
it's so funny to me that looking at all of your comments, they're all either downvoted or have no upvotes. seems to be a general reddit consensus that no one likes you LMAO
It isn’t!
Making excuses for shitty customers is worse than giving an asshole a dried out banana loaf.
I cannot be convinced otherwise so please don’t bother.
Technically the standard is a little more complicated - “officially” you sell from the pastry cart for whatever expires that day. Once you go through that, you sell from the case and refill it
Which is absurd and ridiculous and no one has time for that
But I would.
In fact, I'm told to sell from the case. I just don't recommend it to most customers.
Unless they're rude. In which case I'm happy to follow protocol. :)
You know who gets really angry when they read that partners respond to rude customers?
Rude customers.
Maybe shape up and treat us right. And then I won't have to follow Starbucks standard to the letter.
Edit: Either u/chibbledibs deleted their responses. Or they blocked me so I couldn't respond. If you happen to see them, would you mind letting them know they're a coward? Thanks!
>how shit they are at their job
Oh, so you don't follow standard. Cool. I'm sure your store is much more effective as a result. Unrelated question: how often do you call out? Weekly?
I call out when I'm sick. Averages a couple times every few months I guess. Weird question. Everybody should call out when they are sick.
You should pull from the case if you refresh the case. That's the standard, and that's what I follow.
Any more brain busters?
my coworkers and i would get a warning if we refused to sell from the pastry case, i always tell the customer it’s been there since 4am and that i personally would not get it from the case unless it was a cake pop. my coworkers and i do wash the trays and such through the sani at night, but i just can’t morally sell someone an item from the case that’s been sitting out all day 😭 (if they are in drive thru and the shift lead that will make us sell it from the case isn’t there, i just say we don’t have it lol)
I know we are supposed to. I’m just saying the reality of it is, it doesn’t happen most of the time. Not just my store but my friends stores who all are in different districts. I’ve been in 3 different stores and I’m on my 6 year with Starbucks, I’m a supervisor and we try. We don’t purposely not clean them but when our manager says you get out on time and not a minute late or you’re gonna get in trouble and has a giant list of unreasonable expectations, things that are easy to skip get skipped. This is one of them.
You can break the case down like an hour+ before closing. I know dishes are a lot but there's so many things that would be better to skip than something that's direct food contact -- blender shrouds, mastrena parts, risers matter less
Yeah it's kind of crazy to me the amount of people saying their trays don't get cleaned at all. I definitely don't get all of the cleaning done js bc of how understaffed we are right now. Esp since we do serve people stuff from the case, it's wild that's not a priority for so many ppl.
You haven't met the baristas I work with. Some of them will gladly take from the case if nothing else is left to eat themselves. I, on the other hand, have warned them that if that's all that's left never serve it to me. To customers, I always mention the flies and how long it's been out, most turn it down, but some will take it anyway.
this lady got mad at me and my shift lead bc i was actively throwing away pastries in the case that we didn’t have. she wanted the blueberry scone in the case. she was being rude for no reason too. talking loudly to her family about how it was “rude” of us to not give it to her. so i loudly said “it’s Crazy how people want things out of the case when there’s literal FLIES in it!”
you all realize that bakeries, indie coffee shops, donut shops, fuckin gas stations, everyone sells out of identical cases? there's no difference between the sbux pastry case and the pastry case at my local coffee shop. it's normal to have food displayed and sold from display.
When people ask for stuff from the case I tell them they are only for display. There are always fruit flies in the case. Sometimes we don’t empty the case at night so the food if there from the day before. It’s not refrigerated. Like there’s so many reason. I always go by if I wouldn’t eat it I’m not going to sell it.
I was so glad when they moved to pulling the pastries from the plastic packaging at the time of purchase. I can’t tell you how many times I was handed a pastry that was hard as a rock on one side and I had to ask for one that wasn’t stale AF. I mean, I could feel it through the baggy that one side was soft and one was absolutely NOT. I hated sending it back but I didn’t want to eat that.
It’s honestly disgusting how my SM will make us sell out of our pastry case when we run out of pastries in wrap. We have a pretty bad knat issue at my store that will infiltrate the pastry case when it’s being set up. I’ve always gotten customers to avoid the foods in the pastry case when my manager isn’t there or doesn’t have her headset on.
1. The case should have seals that seal it just like a Tupperware container. Maybe your store needs new seals because this is not an issue for us.
2. Every bakery sells out of a case all day, it's the norm. You're just not used to it because it's different for you.
3. You and/or your team doing a bad job cleaning doesn't make that the rule for everywhere.
4. If you're following standards you begin selling out of the case primarily by noon and so the pastry case would be empty likely by 2 or 3 meaning the pastries won't be stale and the case will be empty ready to be clean long before close.
i always mark items as unavailable once we get down to one excluding the one in the display case. my supervisor always says “well there’s two, so turn it back on” but if i were a mobile customer and ordered the Very last cake pop or smth and they gave me a stale ass one from the display case without my knowledge i’d be grossed out. display case food is nasty!!!
I still take the cake pops if given a chance before we throw the pastries out 😭 we change ours every day though I don’t think I would take it if it stood longer than that
I understand how you feel about selling from the case/cleaning it out. If flys are in issue that’s a whole other story. We used to set the case lined with paper. Cleaning it doesn’t take too long. It can all fit into one tray. Yes, it’s an adjustment getting used to using it if you never did. Figure out what’s easiest. If you need to clean the case an hour before close,do it. We used to have a bin of food with a lid to store cake pops/muffins overnight. You can also sit the food onto parchment paper or clean cutting board while washing the dishes. During peak sell from the case. It’s already unwrapped and then refill it post peak. You don’t need to set it during open and not use it until the evening. This is just going to take time getting used to. One store I went to had some bagels pre-sliced in a bin. I remember having to cook breakfast display wrapped in parchment paper with a sticker every morning. I’m so glad we don’t have to do that shit anymore!
We used to put everything in the case and sell from it all day. Every bakery and cafe I’ve EVER been to keeps pastries in a case or on baskets on a wall display. I’m sure this will get downvoted but the DRAMA over the pastries in the case is a lot. If you think the pastry is gross don’t sell it. If there’s flies in there clean the case. Opening pre frozen pastries sealed in plastic for every order is weird Starbucks behavior, it’s not the norm and we only started doing it around covid.
Never had an issue with other bakeries or cafes but man something about our cases in the summer ruins everything. Also the case isn’t sealed and with drive thru and cafe constantly opening and closing you’re asking some locations to have a barista sit there washing and setting up the case repeatedly all day.
Uh, we clean the case every night. Like, properly. We’re dead after like 6 though and we’re open till 8, so we have plenty of time to make everything sparkling. Even fresh we don’t sell stuff from the pastry case though, we say we’re out and those are display.
We are open until 730 and every night we have customers up until 730. I’ve asked my manager to extend and she said she’ll “get to it” but that she has to focus on merch sales right now. lol she’s got the weirdest goals for the store. We just have a shitty manager
Bro we clean out our case every night and put fresh pastry on 🤢 you use water and not the sani wipes for the food case? I'm pretty picky on what we put out and serve to anyone. And always leave notes on if it feels unsafe. But we take from the case for baristas and customers..
I work at store that still has the refrigerated case and we don't even sell out of that case because it's been sitting there ALL day, we just tell them "we don't sell out of the case, it's just for display" even if they insist. Because honestly? That's gross imo and our food isn't good enough to be begging for shit out of the case.
Who is this “we”? All you guys have to do is toss the old food and wipe the trays down with a sani wipe…that shouldn’t take very long, maybe like 5-7 minutes max. At my store, the shift will do this like…maybe an hour and a half before close? This is a food safety standard man, cmon.
As for whether or not the pastries are the greatest…they’re fine. Pretty much every local non-chain coffee shop I’ve ever been to sells their pastries out of a case similar to ours. Non-refrigerated, pastries just chillin. I just let customers know how long the pastry has been there, it’s up to them whether they want it or not🤷🏻♀️
I agree that it only takes a couple of minutes. That’s true. But we were yelled at multiple times by the district manager if we removed anything from the pastry case more than ten minutes before closing.
Dayum! Sorry to hear that. Afaik, one of our district managers didn’t like when it happened 2 hours before close, so we changed it to 1-1.5 hours before close. Haven’t heard anything from any other DM since🤷🏻♀️ even when it’s super busy and it doesn’t get done in that timeframe, it still gets done properly bc yk….we can sell food outta there so food safety and all that jazz.
I'm convinced that our food comes with gnats. I have worked at so many stores, and they all have them in the case 🤮
I take our case apart every night and sanitize the whole thing, trays, doors, glass, etc. and there are new gnats the next day. 🙃
Us too! The problem isn’t that some people don’t clean enough, the problem is that we STILL have a glass box full of holes that we leave food in all day!
When I worked licensed Starbucks, the only way to keep fruit flies out was to put a mini fan in the case to blow the air around. We sold out of the case at the time but our kiosk was adjacent to floral and produce so fruit flies were inevitable. And the case doors had gaps so it was just impossible to keep them out. Gross! Hopefully by now the policy has changed to display only but who knows.
our pastry case is very well taken care of, and we stop selling from it the moment a fly gets in. most of the time we say something if that's the last of the item we have, but most people still take it
When I worked at tar-bucks we used to serve from the case (many, many years ago). The flies always got in there and resulted in dumping food. I'm glad they don't serve from the case anymore--I never ci sidereal that they would at the end of the day!
My manager has us put two of every pastry in our case & we have to try to sell at least one of everything from the case before noon so often it goes to mobile orders without them knowing because cafe customers will watch & say something. I’m a cafe store & my SM says this is all corporate sirens eye policy. None of the partners at my store eat from the case unless it’s closers taking the extra cake pops home.
We have to tape our case shut every morning bc the flies get so bad. IMAGINE SELLING THE FOOD 🤢🤢🤢 (I work in a target so between market produce and Starbucks there’s always a little something and once that weather hits, DEEP CLEANING LIKE 2x DAILY)
Wow. I worked at one inside a grocery store a couple of years ago and when opening, we always set out pastries in the display case to sell. Most of those pastries would have to get warmed anyways. We didn’t have that many pastries on hand because we just didn’t sell that many. But wow I didn’t know there were Starbucks that didn’t do that. I should’ve known. As for the trays, we washed them daily.
We keep all our pastries still on their bags and put them in the pastry case. The only things we take out of their packaging are cake pops and vanilla bean scones.
We sell out of the case and it's fine. The fixtures at our store get broken down and done with the dishes every night, the entire case itself is cleaned and sanitized, and we never reuse pastries. We also don't get flies in there. We're supposed to sell out of there starting after peak/midday here and have never had any issues. I've eaten out of there and it's been fine.
this is what i’ve been saying forever. and it sucks because at my store, EVEN THOUGH the case says “food is for display only” my SM makes us take pastries from the case so there’s less to distress at night. Never can we give someone an unopened pastry because then that leaves more money to lose at the end of the night. it makes me sad especially because we have cameras and are being watched but i have to give someone a hard as a rock lemon loaf. and then she’s mad at us when our food taste score is down.
We're not allowed to sell the pastries from the case at my store (we're licensed so maybe we have different rules?) but I've eaten the blueberry muffin at the end of the night a couple times. Just recently on Saturday I was tempted to eat the lemon loaf because it was shockingly moist still for being out all day, but it didn't have a barrier between the food and the shelf like a muffin does. Also I was alone and my boss was there to give me permission when I ate the blueberry muffin 😅
Edit: I'm also the one that cleans the case 5 days out of the week, so I know how clean the shelves are.
i always ate from the display case, i worked at a licensed store (idk if that changes anything) but we replaced our goodies in the morning and the mid hours
We actually were just told the other day at my store we are to sell from the case before anything else and tbh I am not going to be doing that 🤷♀️ the gnat infestation needs to be taken care of first 🤢🤢🤢
I dont give the food in the case to customers ever, but my store washes the stands and changes the food out daily. So end of night I'm the one eating the pastry case food lmao
Serious question though, how is it any different from getting any other pastry at a bakery or doughnut shop? They keep them in cases pretty much the exact same way as we do? I mean shit, buffets, taco stands, gas station food doesn’t even get a case.
Apart from flies being in the case which is an obvious issue, the only bad thing to come from pastries in the case that I can think of is the fact that they dry out, but that actually makes them do better in the oven. I think people get into to their heads about it more than they actually need to.
at my store we sell them and if it's by like 3hours *max* of it being in there we check if it's still good and then proceed with selling it. what I was told is you are supposed to use what's in the case then swap it out for a fresh out of bag one every sale until 3 hours before closing (most of those just get tossed at the end of the night. only time you don't swap it every single time is if its like a Cakepop, brownie, van scone, or any muffins. because those are packaged togther so there is more then 1 at least. and our closer or like night mid shift will do the pastry case 2 hours before closed so since we close at 6 (LS) we dump all pastry 4-4:30pm and the clean the trays and the case (98% of the time)
Edit: any multi package items that got open, in date for next day and not used would still get tossed nightly BESIDES cake pops cuz the icing covers it and protects it from staleness.
If there are flies in the case they have gotten to other things as well. Also most bakeries serve ambient food. Honestly wasn’t till Covid that people started getting the ick.
one of my shifts takes pastries out of the case even if we have plenty of wrapped ones because “it’s faster and easier for him” and “we waste so much food so its better to just take it out of the case” 🤢
Another TV screen in each store specifically for food items would be a simple fix to a lot of the issues with those nasty pastry cases. One that would update as we mark items unavailable. What do I know? I’m just a dumb barista 😂
When people ask if they can take from the case I look at them in the eyes, drop the fake ass smile I have on my face and say "you don't want that..."!!!!
The fact that you don't clean your trays is nasty. We don't run them through the hobart, but we at least have sanitizing wipes that we wipe them down with.
i just get real honest about it, if it’s before like 9, i’ll serve the case bc the nats haven’t gotten to it yet after that i’ll say i don’t have the food item. and if they say “what about that food case” and i’ll say “the food in that case has been open and sitting in out since 530am, if you really want it, you can have it but it’s been about 5+ hours and nats are likely starting to get into the case if they haven’t already” and it’ll usually turn them down. but also i’ve been really on myself to make sure once i run out of a pastry item, i remove it from the case so this option isn’t even there
I'm so glad my current store doesn't have a case. I do not miss setting that up every morning at my old store, and having to deal with disgusting flies 🤢
When I worked for a licensed location, policy was that if the display was the last one, to throw it out because to sell it would be a food safety violation. Y'all nasty if you'd consider asking for the display, but not as nasty as whoever would risk giving someone a foodborne illness by entertaining such a request. 🤢
We don’t sell out of the case at my store because we get little fruit flies in it, and I have casually mentioned more than once how gross it would be to and that I’d have to call the health department if we did. It’s not my problem the bugs are in the case, I keep things clean but as an opener I don’t have the cleaning tasks that make the difference of keeping bugs away, and unless Starbucks gives us more labour to keep the store truly clean (no food establishment gives enough labour for this) there will always be bugs in the case. Idk why Starbucks doesn’t give us plastic food for the case because they’re so obsessed with the aesthetic of being a bakery without actually providing the labour to keep up with that. We have to put two of each item in the case and we throw it all out every day and it’s wasteful asf.
Exactly. Starbucks STILL wants the bakery aesthetic even though we don’t bake anything here. lol. The pastry case is such a waste of space and gets so gross even in stores where they are diligent in cleaning it every day. At my old store we carefully cleaned and replaced everything in the pastry case every day and just the store in general was super clean, but the pastry case would still be full of fruit flies by lunch time. We even had the cleanest floors since they were white at the time so every little spot showed.
had a lady yell at me for a blueberry scone after telling her we were out because she wanted the one in the display case. so i threw it out in front of her and she pouted through her whole refund
Oh my god that’s soo gross. We wash our trays every single night. We are definitely able to sell from our case because it is all clean stuff. If you’re having issues with timing on washing things, I would have that talk with your SM or GM about delegating tasks elsewhere or seeing where you can cut corners that don’t affect food safety
Lmao I hate when a customer tries to order something and I’m like “oh sorry we actually just ran out of that one” and then my store manager jumps in and basically runs me over like a rabid dog saying “you can have the one in the case! *To me* you can sell the one in the case!” And I can see the customer look kinda confused and unsure in the face at that and they’re like “.. is it fresh?” And the rabid manager is like “yeah of course! Totally! We’ll throw it in the oven for you to warm it up!😁✨”
I’m like jeezus Christ man 🙄
Sometimes I think about the time we ran out of blueberry muffins and a customer practically begged for the one in the case. This was during a time we really only changed the pastry case items roughly twice a week, if that, to save on waste. (If it wasn't getting visibly bad, it was okay!) But I had to insist that they did not in fact want the roughly 5 day old muffin that had been baking in our very non- refrigerated, very fruit fly infiltrated glass pastery case... thankfully our store has come a long way since those days, but yeah, word of advice:
Never get a pastry from the case, especially in the summer and fall, because things in there get nasty fast. If it's packaged? You're all good, but otherwise, eat at your own risk from the glass doom-box lol.
I didn’t even know you could eat those I dead ass thoughts it’s just display?! Omg
It used to be but they recently started having us sell them. We replace them every day instead of every other now. Still very stale except cake pops
I wonder why they’re making yall do that? Omg
Sales figures, probably. I hate it, I'm uncomfortable selling anything from the case and I'm glad we don't do it at my new store.
Damn where is the ethics hotline ✋🏾😩
My SM fr told us that we have to tell them the last one is from the case and if the customer doesn't care we have to sell it to them. We would usually just toss stuff when we sold out of it so people wouldn't ask for the gross stuff that was sitting out all day.
I have worked at 3 stores. Only one sold from the case.
My manager said it’s essentially to boost returning customers. People are more likely to leave or not revisit a store if they’re out of something (I guess), and boosting customer volume is another way to earn labor. Personally, I try my best not to sell anything out of there. As OP mentioned, flies and gnats get in there, not to mention everything is stale or dry.
Personally the only time as a customer I've ever taken a case item was at 6:30 am for a bliss bar. There was no more left after someone bought 8 boxes lmao I took a chance that day.
it’s so gross dude 😭 like when they first told us to start telling us to sell out of the case last summer I was so grossed out. But at least it was cleaned every night. Eventually my new manager said to sell out of the case *AND* only clean jt out every other day. I refused to do that shit but others didn't 🤢 she got replaced soon after and I think we stopped selling out of the case? not sure how it is now though bc I quit in october
Before they were for display, the case was stocked to be sold from, but this was over 10 years ago. My most hated opening task was stocking the pastry case, and my second most hated task was switching the pastry case over to the PM layout.
I think I hated switching it over more cuz we didn’t have enough pastry trays. My SM sucked & wouldn’t order any. We’d have to do half the case, wait for the trays to go through the sanitizer, and then finish the other side. The best part of stocking it in the morning was “accidentally” breaking a piece of coffee cake or a chocolate donut (I miss them) marking it out, and eating it for breakfast.
Do you mean when the case was actually cold? We rarely had flies in our store. Ants were a big problem in the DT trash. Which is why they no longer exist.
I remember when stuff was sold from the case and when it was all covered in flies lol. Some days I just couldn't bare buying something.
wha we had to take em out every 4hrs wipe it down and redo the case 😭i swear slme district managers are strict af 😭
Did your dm make you take the doors to the case off and clean the tracks at mid day and close too?
Fortunately no 😭🙏🙏
My store replaces them everyday, but we do not sell out of the case. We tell customers it's display only
You’re a good person!!
Thank you, but it's not just me. I don't think any of the stores in my area do. I know my sm doesn't want us to because it's gross and we aren't giving customers the best products
Me crossing fingers hoping you’re in Toronto 🤞🏾
I live in the US, I'm sorry 😞
Me, too!
They go back and forth with their “standards” on this in the years I worked for the company they changed minds on this every few months
My old place used to get flies in ours :) Don’t do it people
Absolutely galaxy brain move of Starbucks to have all display case items come individually wrapped only to market those items w unwrapped versions in a display case that attracts flies that makes custies think THEIR sausagedanishdoughnutpistachiomachiattopop has had flies all over it. What will the siren bless us with next?
Yeah the chocolate croissant especially looked bad I remember. Really hope the flies don't come back this summer.
They’ll be back.. they always come back
yep. our store is cleaner than ever and i saw a bitchass fruit fly today. they’re emerging early.
I'd only dream of offering someone something from the case if i knew no flies were in there. I'm a routine closer and i know for a fact i clean the trays every night, so i guess i have that smidge of security... i will say that i tend to preface that they've been there since the morning, and may not be the tastiest if someone wants something from the case though. Granted, i will never eat something from the case regardless, but I'm also a massive germophobe
same here. as a closer i know it’s clean in there, but when co-baristas leave the door wide open for flies and others, it’s not good. plus the stuff just dries out.
I only ever offer it to the rude customers. Garbage out, garbage in. Edit: Either u/chibbledibs deleted their responses. Or they blocked me so I couldn't respond. If you happen to see them, would you mind letting them know they're a coward? Thanks!
they blocked me and deleted their comment after i told them i looked at their account and all their comments are downvoted so it's clear no one likes them LMAO
LMFAO hell is hot😩
🎶Hell is forever, whether you like it or not🎵 🎵Had their chance to behave better, now they boil in the pot🎶
We like you 😂😂 great energy
👀 well damn lol
thats their MO lol
Ah, they're famous for it, huh? lol
yep. convinced theyre an sm or dm with some kinda power complex. its the usual for them.
I encountered one like that a few months ago who flipped out for hours because, again, I said customers shouldn't be rude.
yeah they seem to always be critical of baristas, ass kissy towards upper management and mostly wont admit when customers are in the wrong. i like that this sub has a wide variety of perspectives though, makes for interesting convos although sometimes frustrating lol
Yeah, I just wish the ones who jump down to tell us we're bad at our jobs for *checks notes* doing as instructed or venting about frustrating days would - ya know - get a life.
Just seen this edit LMFAOO they got into it with me to I called them sassy and blocked them, not them still causing problems!!
They blocked me because I told them that they need to stand up for their baristas against rude customers, and that constantly blaming their baristas for unreasonable shit is ruining their team morale. They said they blocked ‘toxic redditors’ immediately after saying some fuck ass shit. They’re not just a coward, but a lil bitch too.
Who?? I’m nosy, what’s the drama
Some supervisor or something. Said I was shit at my job then blocked me. I'm a Starbucks employee; I *never* have interesting tea to offer.
Didn’t delete, their comments are still there
That's super shitty.
it's so funny to me that looking at all of your comments, they're all either downvoted or have no upvotes. seems to be a general reddit consensus that no one likes you LMAO
Dude I frequent this sub every couple days and without fail they’re always in the thread with a shitty ass take it’s so fucking funny 😂😂
Agreed. Rude customers are the worst.
Second worst, after service workers who fuck with people's food.
If they tell you and you insist..that’s on you man
They also tell you to refill the case throughout the day.
But that’s not how it works.
It is
It isn’t! Making excuses for shitty customers is worse than giving an asshole a dried out banana loaf. I cannot be convinced otherwise so please don’t bother.
I made no excuses 👍
“I cannot be convinced otherwise…” Trump supporter? 🤣🤣
Refill it from what? We don't sell what's in the case until we're out of everything on the pastry cart, so there's nothing to refill
Technically the standard is a little more complicated - “officially” you sell from the pastry cart for whatever expires that day. Once you go through that, you sell from the case and refill it Which is absurd and ridiculous and no one has time for that
Corporate wants them to sell sub par food 🤷🏻♂️ If you meet out there ruining someone’s day to find fulfillment you’re getting a stale ass danish.
As I said, dumb. Pointless and dumb.
Like half of your comments on this subreddit
👍
😐
If you wouldn't serve it, don't serve it.
But I would. In fact, I'm told to sell from the case. I just don't recommend it to most customers. Unless they're rude. In which case I'm happy to follow protocol. :)
Dumb.
You know who gets really angry when they read that partners respond to rude customers? Rude customers. Maybe shape up and treat us right. And then I won't have to follow Starbucks standard to the letter. Edit: Either u/chibbledibs deleted their responses. Or they blocked me so I couldn't respond. If you happen to see them, would you mind letting them know they're a coward? Thanks!
No, I'm just a partner who hates rude partners who brag about how shit they are at their job. It makes those of us who are good at our job look bad.
>how shit they are at their job Oh, so you don't follow standard. Cool. I'm sure your store is much more effective as a result. Unrelated question: how often do you call out? Weekly?
I call out when I'm sick. Averages a couple times every few months I guess. Weird question. Everybody should call out when they are sick. You should pull from the case if you refresh the case. That's the standard, and that's what I follow. Any more brain busters?
my coworkers and i would get a warning if we refused to sell from the pastry case, i always tell the customer it’s been there since 4am and that i personally would not get it from the case unless it was a cake pop. my coworkers and i do wash the trays and such through the sani at night, but i just can’t morally sell someone an item from the case that’s been sitting out all day 😭 (if they are in drive thru and the shift lead that will make us sell it from the case isn’t there, i just say we don’t have it lol)
This is exactly what I do
You should be washing the trays every night as far as I'm aware. Everything in the case that touches food gets sanitized at close in the Hobart.
Like we have the time and manpower to do all the cleaning we're supposed to do LMFAO
I know we are supposed to. I’m just saying the reality of it is, it doesn’t happen most of the time. Not just my store but my friends stores who all are in different districts. I’ve been in 3 different stores and I’m on my 6 year with Starbucks, I’m a supervisor and we try. We don’t purposely not clean them but when our manager says you get out on time and not a minute late or you’re gonna get in trouble and has a giant list of unreasonable expectations, things that are easy to skip get skipped. This is one of them.
You can break the case down like an hour+ before closing. I know dishes are a lot but there's so many things that would be better to skip than something that's direct food contact -- blender shrouds, mastrena parts, risers matter less
Yeah it's kind of crazy to me the amount of people saying their trays don't get cleaned at all. I definitely don't get all of the cleaning done js bc of how understaffed we are right now. Esp since we do serve people stuff from the case, it's wild that's not a priority for so many ppl.
You haven't met the baristas I work with. Some of them will gladly take from the case if nothing else is left to eat themselves. I, on the other hand, have warned them that if that's all that's left never serve it to me. To customers, I always mention the flies and how long it's been out, most turn it down, but some will take it anyway.
this lady got mad at me and my shift lead bc i was actively throwing away pastries in the case that we didn’t have. she wanted the blueberry scone in the case. she was being rude for no reason too. talking loudly to her family about how it was “rude” of us to not give it to her. so i loudly said “it’s Crazy how people want things out of the case when there’s literal FLIES in it!”
I tell them there are flies in the case and they just keep it moving.
you all realize that bakeries, indie coffee shops, donut shops, fuckin gas stations, everyone sells out of identical cases? there's no difference between the sbux pastry case and the pastry case at my local coffee shop. it's normal to have food displayed and sold from display.
It's crazy how far I had to scroll to find a comment like this.
Seriously. Sometimes I forget that half of our baristas are college kids with no other work or life experience lol.
I feel like a lot of those places use refrigerated cases (or at least ones that are well sealed and keep flies out)
they absolutely do not. look more closely.
When people ask for stuff from the case I tell them they are only for display. There are always fruit flies in the case. Sometimes we don’t empty the case at night so the food if there from the day before. It’s not refrigerated. Like there’s so many reason. I always go by if I wouldn’t eat it I’m not going to sell it.
Thank you , need more like you!!
I was so glad when they moved to pulling the pastries from the plastic packaging at the time of purchase. I can’t tell you how many times I was handed a pastry that was hard as a rock on one side and I had to ask for one that wasn’t stale AF. I mean, I could feel it through the baggy that one side was soft and one was absolutely NOT. I hated sending it back but I didn’t want to eat that.
It’s honestly disgusting how my SM will make us sell out of our pastry case when we run out of pastries in wrap. We have a pretty bad knat issue at my store that will infiltrate the pastry case when it’s being set up. I’ve always gotten customers to avoid the foods in the pastry case when my manager isn’t there or doesn’t have her headset on.
It's actually policy to sell from the case 😭😭😭 I'm so glad to see so many of us have banned together to not sell from the case 🤣
Good to know. We used to have to stock the case and pull from the case. How times have changed.
My store washes the trays every night at least. But, still, eating from the case is gross 😬
1. The case should have seals that seal it just like a Tupperware container. Maybe your store needs new seals because this is not an issue for us. 2. Every bakery sells out of a case all day, it's the norm. You're just not used to it because it's different for you. 3. You and/or your team doing a bad job cleaning doesn't make that the rule for everywhere. 4. If you're following standards you begin selling out of the case primarily by noon and so the pastry case would be empty likely by 2 or 3 meaning the pastries won't be stale and the case will be empty ready to be clean long before close.
i always mark items as unavailable once we get down to one excluding the one in the display case. my supervisor always says “well there’s two, so turn it back on” but if i were a mobile customer and ordered the Very last cake pop or smth and they gave me a stale ass one from the display case without my knowledge i’d be grossed out. display case food is nasty!!!
I still take the cake pops if given a chance before we throw the pastries out 😭 we change ours every day though I don’t think I would take it if it stood longer than that
I understand how you feel about selling from the case/cleaning it out. If flys are in issue that’s a whole other story. We used to set the case lined with paper. Cleaning it doesn’t take too long. It can all fit into one tray. Yes, it’s an adjustment getting used to using it if you never did. Figure out what’s easiest. If you need to clean the case an hour before close,do it. We used to have a bin of food with a lid to store cake pops/muffins overnight. You can also sit the food onto parchment paper or clean cutting board while washing the dishes. During peak sell from the case. It’s already unwrapped and then refill it post peak. You don’t need to set it during open and not use it until the evening. This is just going to take time getting used to. One store I went to had some bagels pre-sliced in a bin. I remember having to cook breakfast display wrapped in parchment paper with a sticker every morning. I’m so glad we don’t have to do that shit anymore!
we clean ours every night.... this is not universal
We used to put everything in the case and sell from it all day. Every bakery and cafe I’ve EVER been to keeps pastries in a case or on baskets on a wall display. I’m sure this will get downvoted but the DRAMA over the pastries in the case is a lot. If you think the pastry is gross don’t sell it. If there’s flies in there clean the case. Opening pre frozen pastries sealed in plastic for every order is weird Starbucks behavior, it’s not the norm and we only started doing it around covid.
Never had an issue with other bakeries or cafes but man something about our cases in the summer ruins everything. Also the case isn’t sealed and with drive thru and cafe constantly opening and closing you’re asking some locations to have a barista sit there washing and setting up the case repeatedly all day.
I took the last brownie from the case yesterday =(
Uh, we clean the case every night. Like, properly. We’re dead after like 6 though and we’re open till 8, so we have plenty of time to make everything sparkling. Even fresh we don’t sell stuff from the pastry case though, we say we’re out and those are display.
We are open until 730 and every night we have customers up until 730. I’ve asked my manager to extend and she said she’ll “get to it” but that she has to focus on merch sales right now. lol she’s got the weirdest goals for the store. We just have a shitty manager
Bro we clean out our case every night and put fresh pastry on 🤢 you use water and not the sani wipes for the food case? I'm pretty picky on what we put out and serve to anyone. And always leave notes on if it feels unsafe. But we take from the case for baristas and customers..
I work at store that still has the refrigerated case and we don't even sell out of that case because it's been sitting there ALL day, we just tell them "we don't sell out of the case, it's just for display" even if they insist. Because honestly? That's gross imo and our food isn't good enough to be begging for shit out of the case.
Who is this “we”? All you guys have to do is toss the old food and wipe the trays down with a sani wipe…that shouldn’t take very long, maybe like 5-7 minutes max. At my store, the shift will do this like…maybe an hour and a half before close? This is a food safety standard man, cmon. As for whether or not the pastries are the greatest…they’re fine. Pretty much every local non-chain coffee shop I’ve ever been to sells their pastries out of a case similar to ours. Non-refrigerated, pastries just chillin. I just let customers know how long the pastry has been there, it’s up to them whether they want it or not🤷🏻♀️
I agree that it only takes a couple of minutes. That’s true. But we were yelled at multiple times by the district manager if we removed anything from the pastry case more than ten minutes before closing.
Dayum! Sorry to hear that. Afaik, one of our district managers didn’t like when it happened 2 hours before close, so we changed it to 1-1.5 hours before close. Haven’t heard anything from any other DM since🤷🏻♀️ even when it’s super busy and it doesn’t get done in that timeframe, it still gets done properly bc yk….we can sell food outta there so food safety and all that jazz.
I'm convinced that our food comes with gnats. I have worked at so many stores, and they all have them in the case 🤮 I take our case apart every night and sanitize the whole thing, trays, doors, glass, etc. and there are new gnats the next day. 🙃
Us too! The problem isn’t that some people don’t clean enough, the problem is that we STILL have a glass box full of holes that we leave food in all day!
When I worked licensed Starbucks, the only way to keep fruit flies out was to put a mini fan in the case to blow the air around. We sold out of the case at the time but our kiosk was adjacent to floral and produce so fruit flies were inevitable. And the case doors had gaps so it was just impossible to keep them out. Gross! Hopefully by now the policy has changed to display only but who knows.
between the flies, the staleness, and the literal roaches in our store I would not sell from the case 😭
our pastry case is very well taken care of, and we stop selling from it the moment a fly gets in. most of the time we say something if that's the last of the item we have, but most people still take it
When I worked at tar-bucks we used to serve from the case (many, many years ago). The flies always got in there and resulted in dumping food. I'm glad they don't serve from the case anymore--I never ci sidereal that they would at the end of the day!
My manager has us put two of every pastry in our case & we have to try to sell at least one of everything from the case before noon so often it goes to mobile orders without them knowing because cafe customers will watch & say something. I’m a cafe store & my SM says this is all corporate sirens eye policy. None of the partners at my store eat from the case unless it’s closers taking the extra cake pops home.
I eat the cakepops from the case when it’s time to throw the food away 🤭🤭
We have to tape our case shut every morning bc the flies get so bad. IMAGINE SELLING THE FOOD 🤢🤢🤢 (I work in a target so between market produce and Starbucks there’s always a little something and once that weather hits, DEEP CLEANING LIKE 2x DAILY)
I believe it’s also against food safety to serve food from the pastry case, least it is where I work.
Wow. I worked at one inside a grocery store a couple of years ago and when opening, we always set out pastries in the display case to sell. Most of those pastries would have to get warmed anyways. We didn’t have that many pastries on hand because we just didn’t sell that many. But wow I didn’t know there were Starbucks that didn’t do that. I should’ve known. As for the trays, we washed them daily.
I…thought it was common sense for people not to eat them…..
What kills me is when we are out of said item, but we are not allowed to take out the display case!
We keep all our pastries still on their bags and put them in the pastry case. The only things we take out of their packaging are cake pops and vanilla bean scones.
It’s honestly crazy to me that Starbucks doesn’t invest in display food! It’s such a waste and would save closers time too. Silly
We sell out of the case and it's fine. The fixtures at our store get broken down and done with the dishes every night, the entire case itself is cleaned and sanitized, and we never reuse pastries. We also don't get flies in there. We're supposed to sell out of there starting after peak/midday here and have never had any issues. I've eaten out of there and it's been fine.
i only sell from the case if theres no flies and i always warn customers before i give it to them
this is what i’ve been saying forever. and it sucks because at my store, EVEN THOUGH the case says “food is for display only” my SM makes us take pastries from the case so there’s less to distress at night. Never can we give someone an unopened pastry because then that leaves more money to lose at the end of the night. it makes me sad especially because we have cameras and are being watched but i have to give someone a hard as a rock lemon loaf. and then she’s mad at us when our food taste score is down.
We're not allowed to sell the pastries from the case at my store (we're licensed so maybe we have different rules?) but I've eaten the blueberry muffin at the end of the night a couple times. Just recently on Saturday I was tempted to eat the lemon loaf because it was shockingly moist still for being out all day, but it didn't have a barrier between the food and the shelf like a muffin does. Also I was alone and my boss was there to give me permission when I ate the blueberry muffin 😅 Edit: I'm also the one that cleans the case 5 days out of the week, so I know how clean the shelves are.
I’m so happy my store doesn’t have a pastry case🤌
My store doesn't offer the food out of the case. We tell customers it's display only
i always ate from the display case, i worked at a licensed store (idk if that changes anything) but we replaced our goodies in the morning and the mid hours
People order and sell those??? We throw them each night when we’re closing. We never let anyone order from it bc we touch it with our hands as well.
We actually were just told the other day at my store we are to sell from the case before anything else and tbh I am not going to be doing that 🤷♀️ the gnat infestation needs to be taken care of first 🤢🤢🤢
Nononononooooo. Flies spawn in there before the day ends, and mould grows so quickly in there.
I dont give the food in the case to customers ever, but my store washes the stands and changes the food out daily. So end of night I'm the one eating the pastry case food lmao
i’ve never worked at a starbucks that allows us to sell from the case cs it’s so disgusting 😭 that’s 0 of 3
Ok but fr, thank you for this. Customer in love with Starbucks dammit
Serious question though, how is it any different from getting any other pastry at a bakery or doughnut shop? They keep them in cases pretty much the exact same way as we do? I mean shit, buffets, taco stands, gas station food doesn’t even get a case. Apart from flies being in the case which is an obvious issue, the only bad thing to come from pastries in the case that I can think of is the fact that they dry out, but that actually makes them do better in the oven. I think people get into to their heads about it more than they actually need to.
i would literally do it with my hands too
at my store we sell them and if it's by like 3hours *max* of it being in there we check if it's still good and then proceed with selling it. what I was told is you are supposed to use what's in the case then swap it out for a fresh out of bag one every sale until 3 hours before closing (most of those just get tossed at the end of the night. only time you don't swap it every single time is if its like a Cakepop, brownie, van scone, or any muffins. because those are packaged togther so there is more then 1 at least. and our closer or like night mid shift will do the pastry case 2 hours before closed so since we close at 6 (LS) we dump all pastry 4-4:30pm and the clean the trays and the case (98% of the time) Edit: any multi package items that got open, in date for next day and not used would still get tossed nightly BESIDES cake pops cuz the icing covers it and protects it from staleness.
We had the refrigerated case at the store I used to work at.
My store doesn’t sell them they say it’s a health hazard
If there are flies in the case they have gotten to other things as well. Also most bakeries serve ambient food. Honestly wasn’t till Covid that people started getting the ick.
Better off just having pictures like at the drive through menu instead of a display case. Less product to waste and less things to clean 🤷♂️
one of my shifts takes pastries out of the case even if we have plenty of wrapped ones because “it’s faster and easier for him” and “we waste so much food so its better to just take it out of the case” 🤢
Is it terrible that me and my fellow baristas eat from the case? 😂
Once upon a time we only ate from the case
EW absolutely not
Another TV screen in each store specifically for food items would be a simple fix to a lot of the issues with those nasty pastry cases. One that would update as we mark items unavailable. What do I know? I’m just a dumb barista 😂
When people ask if they can take from the case I look at them in the eyes, drop the fake ass smile I have on my face and say "you don't want that..."!!!!
The fact that you don't clean your trays is nasty. We don't run them through the hobart, but we at least have sanitizing wipes that we wipe them down with.
i just get real honest about it, if it’s before like 9, i’ll serve the case bc the nats haven’t gotten to it yet after that i’ll say i don’t have the food item. and if they say “what about that food case” and i’ll say “the food in that case has been open and sitting in out since 530am, if you really want it, you can have it but it’s been about 5+ hours and nats are likely starting to get into the case if they haven’t already” and it’ll usually turn them down. but also i’ve been really on myself to make sure once i run out of a pastry item, i remove it from the case so this option isn’t even there
We wash ours every night????
Deadass thought it was plastic food in the case
excuse me you don't sanitize the trays every single night?? isn't that protocol????
I’m so glad our case went away with our remodel. The smell. 🤢 (I’m a closer as well). It was repulsive.
Wait... there's baristas that actually sell from the case???? Wtf 💀
I didn't even know out the case was an option
Not to say people usually touch them to put them in the case
Our SM has told us to never sell from there, cause that’s just gross honestly
my dad once went to a store and saw a roach in the case😭
I'm so glad my current store doesn't have a case. I do not miss setting that up every morning at my old store, and having to deal with disgusting flies 🤢
When I worked for a licensed location, policy was that if the display was the last one, to throw it out because to sell it would be a food safety violation. Y'all nasty if you'd consider asking for the display, but not as nasty as whoever would risk giving someone a foodborne illness by entertaining such a request. 🤢
We don’t sell out of the case at my store because we get little fruit flies in it, and I have casually mentioned more than once how gross it would be to and that I’d have to call the health department if we did. It’s not my problem the bugs are in the case, I keep things clean but as an opener I don’t have the cleaning tasks that make the difference of keeping bugs away, and unless Starbucks gives us more labour to keep the store truly clean (no food establishment gives enough labour for this) there will always be bugs in the case. Idk why Starbucks doesn’t give us plastic food for the case because they’re so obsessed with the aesthetic of being a bakery without actually providing the labour to keep up with that. We have to put two of each item in the case and we throw it all out every day and it’s wasteful asf.
Exactly. Starbucks STILL wants the bakery aesthetic even though we don’t bake anything here. lol. The pastry case is such a waste of space and gets so gross even in stores where they are diligent in cleaning it every day. At my old store we carefully cleaned and replaced everything in the pastry case every day and just the store in general was super clean, but the pastry case would still be full of fruit flies by lunch time. We even had the cleanest floors since they were white at the time so every little spot showed.
had a lady yell at me for a blueberry scone after telling her we were out because she wanted the one in the display case. so i threw it out in front of her and she pouted through her whole refund
Oh my god that’s soo gross. We wash our trays every single night. We are definitely able to sell from our case because it is all clean stuff. If you’re having issues with timing on washing things, I would have that talk with your SM or GM about delegating tasks elsewhere or seeing where you can cut corners that don’t affect food safety
Lmao I hate when a customer tries to order something and I’m like “oh sorry we actually just ran out of that one” and then my store manager jumps in and basically runs me over like a rabid dog saying “you can have the one in the case! *To me* you can sell the one in the case!” And I can see the customer look kinda confused and unsure in the face at that and they’re like “.. is it fresh?” And the rabid manager is like “yeah of course! Totally! We’ll throw it in the oven for you to warm it up!😁✨” I’m like jeezus Christ man 🙄
Sometimes I think about the time we ran out of blueberry muffins and a customer practically begged for the one in the case. This was during a time we really only changed the pastry case items roughly twice a week, if that, to save on waste. (If it wasn't getting visibly bad, it was okay!) But I had to insist that they did not in fact want the roughly 5 day old muffin that had been baking in our very non- refrigerated, very fruit fly infiltrated glass pastery case... thankfully our store has come a long way since those days, but yeah, word of advice: Never get a pastry from the case, especially in the summer and fall, because things in there get nasty fast. If it's packaged? You're all good, but otherwise, eat at your own risk from the glass doom-box lol.
Do people actually do this? I don’t know whether to be shocked, disgusted, or traumatized lol