Before we opened CTTP, I never dreamed it would be so hard to find reliable, friendly, and efficient baristas. Originally, we thought we could attract good workers by offering a salary higher than minimum wage, health care benefits, and profit sharing. We also thought we could ensure a high quality workforce by being very careful about who we hired, only offering positions to people who have previous barista experience. Beyond that, we thought our rigorous training program would guarantee that all of our employees understood that even though we are very laid back people, we have exacting standards when it comes to our shop.

Alas, things haven't worked out as we hoped. While we have recruited and retained a number of wonderful people over the past six months, we have also ended up with a surprising number of people who had to be let go or who quit with little or no warning. In the worst case, a full-time employee failed to open the store one morning and simply never came back.

This has caused us to wonder, what are we doing wrong or, at the very least, what can we do better? Are there better ways to recruit workers than listing on Craig's List? Is there a way to entice really great people to cross over from the darkside (aka Starbucks) and join a little upstart like us? Can we do more to keep our good employees happy so they will stick with us over the long haul?

Currently we are looking to hire part-time baristas and a new assistant manager. We already have in excess of 100 applications for the positions and you might think with those numbers I would be confident of success, but I'm not.  We've struck out so many times that I've become rather pessimistic.