route sales representative

regional sales manager

Community Coffee

I have a lot of good and bad to say about working as a Route Sales Rep, mostly bad. The job sounds extremely laid back with the day being finished as soon as your route is done, the simple work of just going and delivering coffee, and getting to just relax and spend time driving. But the fun stops about there and that's only a small part of the entire job.
For one, the company itself has stated that they are currently focusing on the market in Texas and then will work on markets in other states in the southeast in a clockwise order. So if you're not in Texas or Louisiana, expect little support from the company. If you're located far from your Area Sales Manager, expect little support from them as well.
Even with the support, though, I can't recommend being an RSR. It pays salary with no paid overtime and I assume the high pay is compensating for the expected overtime. When I got a raise, I was told it was 3% but it was less than 1.5%. You will absolutely work more than 40 hours per week, the week before Christmas, I worked about 65 and was still behind on my route. An average week had me around 50-55 hours. In addition to simply working so much, the job itself is physical and the truck isn't the most comfortable thing to drive. Which leaves you exhausted by the end of the day and definitely by the end of the week. You spend the weekend recovering as much as possible, hopefully you don't have anything that involves moving planned, and you start it again on Monday.
The physical activity does not just come from going in and out of accounts to service them, but you also load your truck 2-3 times per week. If your location is like mine and feels like the company has totally forgotten about it, you will likely be loading the truck alone. This is not the fault of the warehouse employees, who'd like to help, rather it's the fault of the company for horrendously under staffing it. Everywhere you look outside of Louisiana and parts of Texas is under staffed and they put little effort into replacing people they get rid of unless they're on a route.
As a result of the lack of staff, route relief drivers are rarely present because they are relieving routes outside of their assigned location. And when they are, they are more focused on getting home than taking care of your customers. This means you come back from your time off with an inventory in shambles and having to respond to service calls for a week afterward. Ultimately, you still work the time you took off which discourages you from taking any more time off.
In times of paid holidays, the route still needs to be run and if there are no relief drivers available, you are expected to "work ahead". Which might make sense in routes that cover only one or two cities. In my case, my route was about 3 hours of driving from the farthest north to the farthest south and no 2 days were in the same location with the exception of 2 days on 2 weeks of the month. In cases where I urgently needed to service an account for one reason or another, I often found myself driving over an hour out of my way after finishing an entire day's route.
Account Executives really like to set up new accounts and set dates to set equipment up without talking with the salesman for the route that stop will be on. With the issue of having such a large area to cover, I often ran into times where an AE would contact me about a new account that they're setting up the following week when I'm not expecting to be in the area for several weeks. But they must have the supplies to set up the equipment so I had to go out of my way to overstock new accounts with their initial orders.
The maintenance side and the sales side of the company have very few direct communication avenues. I often had customers ask me about machine repairs or replacements and I'm left telling them that I have no idea and the best I can do is submit another maintenance request for them. That said, for some reason, route drivers handle pour over coffee machines pick up and drop off and Service Techs refuse to touch them.
Morale is generally low. Everyone is overworked and a lot of people can't afford taking a pay cut to get a job that isn't so miserable. Many conversations between employees involve complaining about something with management or the company itself.
The truck itself is just safe enough to drive without putting you directly in the line of danger. Every truck is different but none of them are perfect. The manager promised new trucks to be coming and I can't attest to those, but the current box trucks will beat you up as you drive, buttons and internal lights may break and they will do nothing to fix them, and mine had a nice feature of blowing very humid air when the heater was on which would fog all of the windows. I was left with the choice of freezing or driving without being able to see until I bought a squeegee that I could use to wipe off the windows constantly. Additionally, it is up to the the route driver to maintain the truck. Oil changes can be difficult and out of the way. We were told not to use Take 5s and then they suggested that I take mine to a Take 5. If the truck needed to be repaired which left it in a shop for an extended period of time, my location had no spare truck which left us using a cargo van which could only hold about a day's worth of product.

To highlight the handful of positives, my manager was genuinely helpful and seemed to care about my well being when we spoke. I met some very interesting people and discovered many restaurants that I would've never considered. The views on some of the roads could be beautiful sometimes. And despite the low morale, everyone was always helpful and supportive. It felt like an "all in this together" type feeling.

Overall, I wouldn't recommend working as an RSR. It seemed like some of the people in Texas and Louisiana loved their jobs but they also weren't Service Techs or RSRs. You will be expected to dedicate your life to the company and no one else will seem to understand why you're so exhausted. You're the messenger of the bad news to customers and they will absolutely throw verbal abuse at you over it. This job is for a specific type of person and they are pretty few and far between. I guess I wish the company luck in finding them, but odds are they'll just push them away too.

What is the best part of working at the company?
The ability to sale a great product. For the first several years you felt like you were apart of the family. But that slowly went away. 

What is the most stressful part about working at the company?
Slowly home office lost touch with the field. From the Vp’s down to management at the locations. The management at the locations were just there. They were managing anything. I’ve had the ability to work in many locations. There were a couple good managers. But the rest had no passion for the job. There I was cleaning messes, and pointing out issues to my director and VP and nothing gets done. I had such great passion for the company the first several years I worked there. Which motivated me to sell more and always go the extra mile. But slowly the company stopped feeling like a family. Especially with the new CEO.  I can not believe Matt allowed the company to go in the direction that it did. I wanted to stay with the company 45 years and retire with the company. I just can’t believe the way things have turned out. After the mass layoffs, I have a feeling Community will have a deep financial and regret for the decisions they made. It’s just unbelievably sad. 

What is the work environment and culture like at the company?
No longer a family culture. For such a small company it’s no longer a family culture. 

What is a typical day like for you at the company?
Start my day with a cup of coffee, than begin selling!

This is an all cold calling position, they expect you
To make 40 cold calls a week while still doing follow ups from previous cold calls, orders, and installs. They use CRM but micro manage everything you do. You’re expected to record everything you do in CRM (which is what it is for) but also email a break down in Excel of everything you enters in CRM and then have a 1-2 hour call weekly to discuss everything you Already put in CRM and your Excel email so that District manager can build a report of what you already sent them to send to the regional manager. They will tell you that you are the only rep in your territory but they fell to mention every route salesman and route Sales supervisor is also having to make cold call quota and sales goal in those same territories. Oh and delivery guys make more than AE’s. 
They are owned by the 4th generation of they same family but are trying to operate like a large corporate business. I was warned by route managers that There was no Job security being an Account Executive  and they were correct, just as soon as Covid hit they started cutting AE’s as quick as they could. 


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company used to be a great place, work culture was good and no micro management, as long as you kept busy and did all your work it was smooth sailing. with the new management changes  that's changed I no longer feel like I'm part of the team but only a number everything is routed for us and if we don't follow our route EVEN if it makes no sense at times we get punished they expect everything to be done in 30 minutes or less and god forbit if you run into over time because you will be constantly reminded that you need to get back to only 40 hours a week they expect you to work work work and finish your route but you get punished if you go over on time and they will send you home early at the end of the week causing you to miss your goal for that day since you wont be able to finish all the workload. most of the techs had a huge cut in pay since they took away overtime without a warning, but management will tell you that all the changes are there to benefit you,  the don't ever ask for feedback from the actual people that are out on the field.

I started as a PreSell Sales Rep. My job was to drive around and be the face of the account and place orders for retail grocery stores. I was provided a company vehicle that had room for some, but not a ton of product. In my first 2 quarters there I was the only rep to cover quota in the region. A month or two after that, a delivery guy quit and I was told I was responsible to fill in for his position until they were able to hire. I ran delivery for over 3 months, not the job I was hired for and delivery started at 4am. At the time, there were people on staff who's job it was to fill in on vacant routes or as people were out for vacations, sick etc. Basically the delivery job is the hardest and has the worst hours and no one wanted to do it so the new guy was told it was his job now. I began looking for another job 2 months after being put on delivery and left the company after 9 months. I do hear there is new management in the area now and I do believe that as a whole, the company is solid with good job security. 

Overall working here is pretty fun and easy to work with the people there. You will be cross trained on the whole warehouse which if you want to advance is good but if not can be frustrating due to the pressure to achieve everything you were already assigned to do that day. The corporate feel to this job is what turns me off from it personally. I feel like they promise a lot but don't deliver. The compensation is mediocre and if you're not in a leadership role except to hit a pay cap quickly. Upper management is friendly but very cheap when it comes to fixing problems within the warehouse. The hardest part of the job is trying to use the outdated tech and waiting on forklifts to be fixed. 
The best part of the job was the co-workers I had.
It's a great group of people and the job will expand your resume but it's far from perfect.

What is the best part of working at the company?
The health benefits and Fridays 

What is the most stressful part about working at the company?
The immature employees. I couldn't breathe too many times without my supervisor trying to go to my regional manager or HR. It seemed the men up there were definitely more dramatic than the women. 

What is the work environment and culture like at the company?
Very tense. Interacting with the drivers was probably the only tolerable thing about that job. I came to get a paycheck, so I'd keep to myself. Got in trouble for not talking to coworkers. Started talking, and one guy got offended and was mad that I was friends with someone else and not him... screwed either way. 

What is a typical day like for you at the company?
Come in at 5. Put orders together. Restock. Load orders on delivery trucks. Go home at 2pm.

What is the best part of working at the company?
It's a steady growing company 

What is the most stressful part about working at the company?
The new Go To Market Strategy is a complete disaster!  They took a great company and made it to where there will be tremendous turnover going forward. The new way is inefficient,  cumbersome, and is the epitome of trying to fit a square peg into a round hole. 

What is the work environment and culture like at the company?
When the family was involved with the company it couldn't have been better. Now, you are just a number on the payroll. 

What is a typical day like for you at the company?
No matter the role, you'll work regularly 12+ hours per day. If you are in a management position,  you'll do 12+ hours and do the work of at least 2 and sometimes 3 people.

The company lacks long term company goals. For example, company is well known in Southern Louisiana, yet is struggling to become a national brand after a century. Family owned company with limited budgets and no patience to see plans through in order to determine effectiveness. Seems to be a company that is only willing to spend a certain amount of money and create an arbitrary EBITDA in order to make a target to go fishing the remainder of the year.  I learned working for small companies/family owned businesses is like working at a store front with no real Human Resources or infrastructure in place in order to implement plans. The most enjoyable part of the job was the free coffee and leaving work each day. 

Top Job Titles	Average Salary
Route sales representative 1 salary reported	$50,000 per year
Regional sales manager 1 salary reported	$70,000 per year

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