Your brand values are meaningless unless you teach your team how to turn them into action.
Welcome to Operator Notes, a weekly newsletter written by coffee operators, consultants, creators, and practitioners who spot trends and share insight on what to do about them.
This week’s edition is written by Julie Hanell, Founder of The Coffee Dispatch.
✉️ Operator Notes: practical advice from people working in coffee.
👋 Get the newsletter in your inbox every Wednesday—sign up.
Value Statements Should Not Be Gathering Dust
Most of the cafes I consult for have a values statement somewhere: on their website’s About page, framed beside the register, in an onboarding packet few people read past page two, and once a quarter someone reads it aloud in a team meeting where everyone nods the way passengers nod at the safety demonstration on a plane.
Ask an owner or manager what the cafe stands for and the answer arrives fast (quality, community, sustainability, craft!). Ask what a barista should do at 7:15 a.m. on a Tuesday, with a line out the door and a regular asking for a substitution that isn’t on the menu, and the answer gets vague, because nobody ever turned those values into a decision a barista can make alone.
The regular who gets a different answer than they got on Monday will rarely say a word about it. They’ll just take their flat white to the cafe down the road and tell a friend why (and you’ll probably never hear about it).
Values Are Meant To Be Experienced
Values should be at the center of your playbook. When your team knows how your values show up in your cafe, their work gets easier, yours does too, and trust will follow.
Turn one value into a verb. Pick a single value and write it as something a barista can do in under ten seconds. “Generosity” is a sentiment, but “surprise someone before they ask” is a verb you can teach any day of the week. A customer ordering a latte while eyeing the cookie display is a great opportunity for a small moment of unexpected generosity: a tiny cookie or sweet offered on the house can turn an ordinary visit into a memorable one.
But value is not only about adding something extra. It is also about trusting your team to make thoughtful decisions in the moment. Give staff the freedom to serve with care, whether that means replacing a drink that is not quite right or offering a small gesture when it would make the customer’s day. When employees are empowered to protect the customer experience, value naturally follows.
Stay with that one value for a month before adding another (I know you want all five on the wall by Friday!). Consistency builds a little at a time, so give it room to take hold.
Tell your team what the value is allowed to cost. If generosity is a value, say out loud that on a busy morning a barista can give away a drink to someone having a rough day, and that you’ll cover it. Most teams hold back because they’re unsure whether you’ll back them, so the day you absorb a cost without blinking is the day they start believing the value is real.
Start a yes jar. Every time a team member says yes to something off-menu or a special request, such as sharing the cafe’s playlist when someone is clearly liking it, a coffee bean goes in the jar, and on Friday the team campaigns for the best “yes” of the week by telling the story behind it. Taking a vote creates friendly competition for all the right reasons. It sounds silly, but it makes the right call visible, gives people a story to share, and shows new hires what a good decision looks like. We learn by copying what we see, yet as managers we often forget that and keep explaining instead of showing.
Go Deeper
Using Service Training to Empower Baristas
Why backing your baristas’ judgment calls matters more than telling them to be friendly.
Beyond Beverages: Elevating the Cafe Experience through Consistent Quality Service
How Frothy Monkey and Huckleberry Roasters turned their values into training.
Quit Throwing Baristas to the Wolves with Poor Onboarding Practices
A first-day and first-90-days framework for new hires.
The Coffee Marketing Pyramid
A guide to turning brand mission and values into marketing strategies that feel distinct.
Building a Mission-Focused Team
How Peace Coffee, Hirewire, and King’s Gambit hire for values fit, then onboard baristas.
Photo courtesy of Aleksandra Dementeva on Unsplash.
