#customer tips

Don’t. Just don’t.

Even more so if you’re in the drive thru.

It’s so important to use your words when you’re ordering. Be clear and specific when you order! Nothing is less clear and specific than pointing vaguely at a menu that’s almost always above the person taking your order.

Remember that they’re not required to memorize what that menu looks like. Even if they did, there is no way to guess what part of the menu that you’re specifically pointing at!

And once again, same for the drive thru! No one memorized what the menu outside the building looks like, most if not all of the employees don’t even know what the drive thru menu looks like on the average day because they don’t interact with it.

A quick and easy tip! If you are going through a drive thru and you’re anyone who is not the driver, do not speak.

Let’s start with the simple fact that the speakers are barely good enough quality to hear the person in the drivers seat, who is already the closest person to said speaker. So we DEFINITELY can’t hear you if you’re in the passenger seat or god forbid the backseat.

Next up is that a lot of the time it’s because the driver is too lazy to actually just ask what everyone in the car wants. If you, as the driver, don’t want to say everyone’s order, you need to either suck it up and do it or go inside.

Thirdly, drive thrus are on a timer. Always have been. You are wasting time by allowing other people to yell out their orders and we struggle to figure out what everyone wants, and this leads to you usually having to deal with a mix up and us getting yelled at for our bad times.

There is zero issue with having everyone order themselves if you’re inside because there’s way less pressure.

If you do this inside, I can properly hear everyone and also give them my full attention. The drive thru also won’t be held up due to the confusion! Not to mention more often than not, at least one person isn’t sure what they actually want, and if you’re inside I can help you out way faster.

God forbid if you do the worst version of backseat ordering: letting your child order for themselves from the passenger or back seat.

Once again, I can’t even hear adults through the speaker. I definitely can’t hear your toddler who is both nervous and confused. Until they can order by themselves normally, don’t do this.

If you want your child to order, please come inside.

If an employee is wearing a name tag, do NOT call them by their name! You are not their friend, and you are certainly not on a first name basis with them.

No, I don’t care how nice they are to you or if you’re a regular. Unless they introduce themselves to you genuinely (not in a customer service way, like how a server would before taking your order), do not address them by their name. You don’t even need to say their name for any reason, so why do it?

I know for some older folk, it makes them feel more polite if they say thank you and the person’s name, as if you can somehow personalize an interaction between complete strangers. I can promise you it’s not more polite. It’s not rude, but it’s annoying.

It doesn’t make us feel good when you do it. It only weirds us out.

If they don’t have their name tag, don’t point it out. It doesn’t matter. Also it’s just overall better to not wear it, especially for safety reasons. I’ve had coworkers get stalked online because their name tag had their real name on it and creeps looked them up.

And I do not give a single fuck.

If you, as a customer, say you used to work at a store like mine at any point during the transaction, you are a bad customer. Point blank.

People don’t say that unless they’re being bitchy. It’s usually meant to talk down to whoever you say it to and to be the “polite” way to tell them they did something wrong.

So you’re ready to order a drink! Awesome! What is the best way you can order that allows the smallest margin of error and makes life better for you and the barista?

Order of Operations

There is definitely an order of how you should say things to make everything easier. In general, think of it as the order you’d go through to make the drink itself. It helps both the person typing it into the POS and the person making the drink!

Size - how big is the drink? (Note, if you’re not at Starbucks, do not say Starbucks sizes. No one else uses them, and not everyone knows them, it’s way easier to say small/medium/large)

Temperature - is it hot or iced? While plenty of places will assume hot as the default if you don’t specify, please still make sure to tell us! If it’s iced, this is also where you should specify if you need less ice or extra ice!

Type of Drink - is it a coffee? Espresso drink? Hot chocolate? Lemonade? Refresher/pink drink? Let us know! This is also where you should tell them if your drink is normal or decaf!

Customizations - what type of milk do you want for your espresso drink? Is your coffee black or does it have cream and sugar? Do you want a flavor in that?

Always use this outline for ordering! In drive thrus for example, someone will be making your drink at the same time that you’re speaking it, so if you say it in the correct order, it makes everything move faster! Also most POS systems are set up to type in the order in this way, so it’ll be faster to type in as well!

Important Terms to Remember

Black

This is gonna be basic coffee with nothing in it. Some people think it means just no dairy or only a flavor, but it means nothing. So if you say you want a caramel black or a black with sugar, that’s technically incorrect. We know what you mean! But you’re more likely to confuse a new employee by saying stuff like that.

Regular

This depends on where you go. Some places take regular to mean cream and sugar, while some will take this as another variant of black. When in doubt, you can say regular cream/milk and sugar. Regular should be used as an a descriptor of amount, not what you want in the coffee solely because regular means different things to different people.

And for the love of god, regular does not refer to the brew of coffee. You do not need to specify the brew if it’s anything other than original/medium blend.

Light

This one will vary from shop to shop, person to person. Where I work currently, light would be 1 extra of whatever dairy you have in the drink.

Most places, however, do not have a standard build for the baristas to follow if you say light. That’s why you shouldn’t expect consistency if you just say light.

Sweet

If you have a particularly large order, you need to send that in ahead of time and not just show up and order like normal.

Coffee shops and cafes are not built to handle large orders! They’re built for people who are getting less than ten items per person/car!

You have two options for this: you can mobile order or call the business ahead of time to place your order. You should always call ahead if you’re getting a LOT of stuff for an event.

These businesses need the extra time to put together large orders because all that happens when you pull up and place it like normal is you slow the entire building to a stop. Depending on what you’re ordering, they may need to order more stuff for the store so they don’t end up having nothing for anyone else.

Does it look like your drink?

Does the ticket on the cup have your order number?

Does the ticket on the cup have your exact drink on it?

Did I call your name?

Is your name written on the cup?

Was I even looking at you when I placed down the order?