team member

shift leader

assistant manager

supervisor

retail sales associate

Buff City Soap

Reading these reviews is the first time I don’t feel alone working with this company. This is a fairly new company and that usually comes with a lot of change and figuring things out. This is another story! I was hired as a Store Manager in the Austin Area. I have some serious experience and knowledge about running a business, hiring a good staff and working retail to be most profitable. It seemed promising and their mission statement is great but it’s all a façade. I work with investors who have no idea and no experience in working retail. There is 50 stores to be open and they think the three of them can be the HR dept, the regional managers in the three big cities, Maintance, trainers, etc. there is no room for growth because these investors think they can do it all. They have opened 4 stores now and are about to open their 5th. 2/2 of their Austin store managers have quit within 6 months of the business starting. The investors walk around telling us as store managers not to listen to corporate and to do what they say. It’s a huge tug of war battle. They are inappropriate with attractive female employees and like to talk about creating a “ball sack” soap. 
This has quickly turned into a circus and they are stomping around threatening to fire everyone who does what corporate says. There is no chain of command as they will go to my shift lead and blow her up on her day off with what I need to implement in the store. They don’t come to me. Guess I’m not pretty enough. 🤣 
The actual job is fun but corporate can’t keep their investors in line and are constantly hiring new people with no experience so it will be servers years before they are in a decent condition.
My investors might as well set their buildings on fire the way they treat people and have staff on eggshells. They have fired 2 good people based on not being satisfied and they have turned over the entire staff I hired at the first store I opened due to being inappropriate and intimidating and leading by fear. I do not and will not recommend this to anyone who has retail or store management experience because in this company, no one cares how good you are, they only care how much you will stroke their ego. 

Working at Buff City Soap was an interesting experience. One of the positives was the opportunity to help make the products. I enjoyed the hands-on aspect of the job and appreciated learning how the soaps and other items were produced. The store manager was also kind and supportive, and I appreciated that.

However, there were some aspects of the workplace structure that were difficult for me. The AOE (Area of Effectiveness) sales system felt very competitive because employees’ hours seemed tied to their individual sales performance. This created an environment where it sometimes felt like employees were competing with each other for hours rather than working together as a team. I personally would have preferred more transparency about that system during the hiring process.

Training was another area where I think improvements could help new employees succeed. The job requires balancing customer service, sales goals, register accuracy, and production tasks. More hands-on training and a longer adjustment period would likely help new employees become confident in these responsibilities.

Retail can also be physically and mentally demanding. In my case, I tried to push myself too hard early on and worked a very long shift without taking proper breaks, which made the experience more overwhelming than it needed to be. In hindsight, pacing and better support during the learning phase would have helped.

Overall, I enjoyed the creative and hands-on side of the job and appreciated the manager. However, the competitive sales structure, limited training time, and the pressure of retail sales made the environment challenging for me. With stronger training support and a more collaborative team structure, I believe the experience could be improved for future employees.

Creating product was the highlight, a very different experience then any other retail position. It constantly kept you interested. However due to this you are essentially working two jobs for the price of one. Constantly flip flopping between customer service and creation of product. It's exhausting for only about a 50 cent pay increase from normal retail and work days are long. 

Outside of that management seems to be very hit or miss. Most management seem to be new to it and often struggle with basic transparency and communication. In fairness to them buff city works management to the bone, often expecting unreasonable hours and minimal pay, while seeming unsympathetic to any issues faced by the work load. 

Only about 5 to 7 people work at a location at a time and because of this and the intense work load everyone faces, it tends to create an almost grade school like environment. Gossip and general rudeness became very prominent at my location. People who left the company on either good or bad terms often became the target of rude behavior.  Including looking into ex employees private online history, calling their new places of employment, or attempts to sabotage future endeavors. Management did not discourage these actions (even though this was on company time) and often participated. It made leaving anxiety inducing. 

Though the idea of creating product in retail instead of stocking or cleaning may sound ideal to many, it may be better to search elsewhere. Especially those who are neurodivergent or have mental disabilities. This environment is not built to accommodate it unfortunately.  

Managers/Team members are overworked and underpaid, they’re required to work with very few employees, forcing them to do more work than they’re getting paid to do. It’s easy to get sick, due to being over worked. 
Communication between corporate and stores is absolutely atrocious, there are sales that will be randomly announced and changes that employees will be notified day of. The expectations from team members and GM’s are completely unrealistic and most stores are only allowed to have 3-4 employees, forcing people to work multiple hours by themselves each day, even if they’re soaping or doing other production. Most part time employees aren’t given more than 10-15 hours a week, and full time employees only get 30. During the holiday season, employees are forced to do 5-6 times the amount of work, due to not having enough staff to help, but don’t get paid for it. 
The PTO for managers/full time employees is horrible, you don’t even get 8 hours a month for the first 5 years, and you’re forced to use PTO if you get sick. There are full time employees that get more PTO than their GM’s. The insurance/benefits offered through the company is expensive and not worth having and they automatically opt you in for a 401K whether you want it or not. 
District managers only help the stores that are having issues and don’t focus or care about all of their stores but if/when they do help, it is held over them. The company overall, is not worth working for, they truly do not care about any of their employees.

It is genuinely fun making soap and providing that service for people.

Upon first hire there is promise of multiple store expansion in the state, promotions, and benefits - which was stated on many of the hiring ads. 
This is not happening in a timely manner for those looking to make a career. 

This isn't your average business. 
Not only are you provided the occasional pizza party to those in-store; the owner will magnanimously drop off a few cookies from his business lunch meeting.

The interview process is interesting. Notably, there is a simple, rugged, Non-Disclosure-Agreement meant to protect the companies recipes from being disclosed to competition.
For your benefit as a potential employee, keep in mind this, hardly legal, document is only to protect the companies recipes. 
This franchisee has a history of using that non-disclosure-agreement to silence employees from speaking of him and his behavior.

The franchise appears accommodating to disabilities at first; however, Virginia is questionable at best.

The confused state of communication from franchise partners, franchise, and the trickle down to store level is unbelievable; with many situations often getting shifted to those at store level.

Severely underpaid at all store levels in Virginia. 
The franchisee appears open to discussions around pay at first; however, quickly evades to a lack of funds for any reason he can imagine.

Much better employment for pay and mental health is available.

When I first started I was excited about coming onto the team and I had high hopes for the company. Being that it was a new business I was aware there were going to be hiccups but there are a lot of things that still needs to be established.  I’ve listed a few:

-Issues with onboarding staff and asking for confidential documentation multiple times. This created concerns for the employees confidentiality. 

-Roles haven’t been fully established. The GM is responsible for scheduling, deposits, inventory, placing all orders, hiring and training, manually tracking PTO, making products and all the other daily tasks. You will have a GMIT and two AM’s but they will not be able to help with any of these duties besides making products and coaching & training, which defects the purpose of their roles. So look at them as more of a key holder. 

-You are given very little hours to schedule your team so if you are not apart of management be prepared to only work about 20 hours a week if that. This also goes for pay. The only way you are able to make decent money is to be apart of management.

-Soap consultants do not get many benefits. I hope they at least let them accumulate PTO with the limited amount of pay and hours they receive. This will help with turnover and takes stress off employees who hours are short to be able to use the PTO.

I left because I wasn’t valued as an employee. I helped open multiple locations but got paid the least. The newer management made more than me. I wasn’t heard in the company and I felt like my opinion to help the business succeed was overlooked. 
 

Overall the tasks you complete, as far as making products, is fun and creative. In the beginning, it was a great experience. It wasn't until our manager's mother got sick that everything went downhill. Corporate told our manager to put her mom in "a home" even though she was young and suffering from cancer and essentially forced out our manager for needing time off.

Instead of hiring from outside or anyone within our team with experience for the manager role, they choose someone who has only worked retail 3 months and can't focus on more than one task at a time. It was horrible trying to communicate. 

Your only upline is a bunch of 20-25 year old girls who also have zero experience in their positions. If you ask them a question, you'll get 3 different answers. And 90% of customer backlash you receive will be due to your enforcement of their wrong answers.

They will never back you up in decisions you have to make as a retail employee (ie. honoring expired coupons or sales) and will give anyone whatever they want, making it pointless to enforce anything and leaving you to look like a bad employee. 

There was an incident where we went out of our way to correct an issue with a customer and did everything they'd asked and a corporate member proceeded to write up everyone who had been involved in attempting to resolve the problem. 

They preach a healthy work culture but the corporate team constantly talks poorly on employees. It's a terrible place to work for and you'll never be able to make them happy.

The only thing that made this job worth it was getting to see my coworkers and getting to make products. A lot of stores had bad managers, but mine was awesome and she was always looking out for us. However, any management past that was terrible. I was making $10/hr to constantly be stressed and overworked by trying to meet unrealistic expectations set forth by upper management. They constantly wanted huge amount of products to be made (while staff numbers were low because they never wanted to give out hours so 9 times out of 10 we couldn’t finish everything that needed to be made) , but you could never have time because you were also expected to hound customers to upsell products. And after a long day of working extremely hard on your feet, upper management would only ever tell us what we were doing wrong. Benefits were non existent as well as raises and forget about advancement. When I was hired I was promised a dollar raise per year, but once I hit my year my DM acted like they didn’t know what I was talking about. I was never given my raise for going full time. They were constantly raising the prices on products but none of that was ever given back to the people who made those products possible. This job is definitely only for someone who doesn’t have to work and doesn’t mind not being appreciated. Most people who start here don’t last long and I can only imagine how much worse it is if your coworkers aren’t great to be around. If you’re offered a position here I would go the other way. 

Working here wasn't terrible at first, but it was impossible to get hours if you were a regular associate and even if you clocked in 5 minutes early it was an issue. It was a problem if you stayed after closing to help the betterment of the store, but it would've also been a problem if you left the place dirty at the same time. There is no winning. Micromanaging is very prominent at this place, uppermanagement is constantly breathing down your neck if you're the manager of the store. Uppermanagement tends to talk to you in belittling tones in emails and in person. If you're a regular associate, you would barely get hours, but if you're a manager you get hours only to be stressed and overworked. There are also unrealistic standards that upper management wants and it's literally impossible to accomplish. It was very, very frequent when you would be scheduled by yourself on a busy day because there were "no hours to give" and there were things that needed to be produced, but you couldn't get to it if you're customizing things for customers and also working the register. Also, if you're not a fan of kids, then this job probably isn't for you. The hardest part of the job, for me, was bath bomb parties which are a very common occurrence along with "make-n-takes" which are catered toward younger children. Rude, entitled customers were frequent, and another thing that was hard about this job. The most enjoyable part of the job was making the products which was fun, but that's about it. 

The job is very fun and I never have too much time on my hands. This can be a pro and a con since it also means I have no time to really breathe. I work at a less busy location in my area (from what I've heard), which is honestly a blessing. Still, I feel overworked since we need to balance making product, customizing product, greeting and helping customers, and working the cash register. Not to mention, most of the stores are understaffed. I also happen to work somewhere with reliable and extremely nice and trustworthy people. 

Management is iffy. My store manager is very nice and fun to work with so they aren't the problem. What is the problem is anything above the level of my store manager. They have ever-increasing demands, constantly wanting things to look a certain way (which is understandable.... to a degree), strict policy/structure when greeting guests (with threats of termination if not abided by), and everything is changing all the time. I understand it's a fairly new company, but some of the things they come up with are quite ridiculous. Sometimes I think they just want to feel powerful. 

I think at the core, it's a good company for the most part, but the higher-ups talk and make decisions while it's the underpaid, stressed workers who have to carry out and follow said changes or else. Sadly, it's the same case with a lot of large corporations. 

Top Job Titles	Average Salary
Team member 36 salaries reported	$13.54 per hour
Shift leader 66 salaries reported	$13.53 per hour
Assistant manager 23 salaries reported	$15.02 per hour
Supervisor 24 salaries reported	$14.75 per hour
Retail sales associate 35 salaries reported	$13.38 per hour

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