ice cream scooper

shift leader

shift coordinator

ice cream maker

general manager

Salt & Straw

Have you ever walked into a brand new shiny office, place of work or a bar where everyone looks like they just left a funeral?

That's what this feels like, day in and day out. There is never a hello or good morning that feel genuine. Everyone is just going through the motions to get to the end of the day and it shows. 

Prep teams are wearing thin from the silly amount of hand cutting needed. The monotony of doing the same task for 10-11 hours a day be it cutting brownies, cracking brittle by hand or shaking buckets gets to you. You would think there would be a better way to accomplish these things, but they are stuck in their ways.

The hours: 4 10 hour days that feels so much longer day after day. For being in your feet and having to lift an absolutely ridiculous amount of boxes and bags, you would think you would get more than a 30 minute lunch and two 10 minute breaks.

You will also almost NEVER get out on time. You will leave 30-45 minutes late every single day becuase no one of authority in the kitchens will say "Hey, it's an hour before we need to leave maybe we should start cleaning! 

Nah, we start cleaning at 4:45 so that the days production can be completed. The ridiculous schedule handled by someone not involved in the kitchen at all. 

But hey, at least you can go outside during your breaks and deal with feces and urine on the side walks due to the amazing location downtown. 

Injuries: Injuries occur weekly. Why? Repetitive stress injuries. This is the type of injury that sneaks up on you from, you guessed it, doing the same motion for hours on end. 

From cutting brownies for 40 hours straight to lifting bags of base to fill buckets. Your shoulder will eventually go out and your wrists will eventually start to say "that's enough". 

With the amount of volume they produce its more of a "how long can this person last before they quit or break" 

I have never seen so much turn over, anywhere. Every week there is someone new and every week someone has left. 

They have a LOT of growing pains to deal with but they won't address them. The owners are looking for more investors and I have the inkling they won't be owning it very much longer. They are so disconnected by what goes on it blows my mind they are still even here. 

YOUR staff hurts. Your ice cream is suffering. You opt to use canned products half the time. Your growing too fast for your own good. 

12 ice cream shops up and down the coast provided by 4 tiny ice cream machines. 

Yeah, that's how you scale a business.

The company is great as far as companies go but it's really only for management, at a lower level you're definitely given super high standards to abide by, and if you work anywhere less than super high energy and hard-working all the time it's an issue. They will also give you specific rules to follow and when customers get mad demand something else after you've told them the rule, managers will side with the customers and essentially throw you under the bus as the rude employee, but if you do what they ask if it's against policy you get in trouble, no winning scenario there, they will side with customers at your expense but that's just business I guess. Higher-ups in the company aren't helpful when you need it and show they're putting the money first. You also need to be a certain type of person for them to like you (high energy and super peppy/great mood all the time). The standards are just too high even when you're doing the most it's never really enough. Pretty much the only people in the company who are treated properly for their work are agm and higher because even the shift leads struggle and are given way more than they can/should be able to handle. It's mainly all talk when it comes to how much they care about their employees because they're not there for us when they need us and when it comes to actually be understanding when something is happening in life (family/illness/mental health) it's really just like well that sucks but we need you to work or we'll write you up. The money is great though and tips make up most of the checks. They also expect you as a part-time employee to put the company before yourself all the time even when you're not management and get upset when you keep reiterating you have other priorities other than your part time job where won't let you get to 30 hours. I think it's a great company to work for if you're always giddy and super friendly all the time and don't really have any health issues, or is good for short term while you're trying to save up or find the next thing, but at the end of the day it's a business with money as their priority.

In my year and a half so many changes occurred. I will say Salt & Straw handled Covid extremely well. We were constantly getting updates on new procedures. I really appreciate how serious they took the situation.

Salt & Straw tries really hard to be a good place. No sure the current standing but when I started over 50% of management was female, super refreshing! This is the first employer that has ever asked my preferred pronouns and placed them on the weekly schedule where others can see.

I saw two production managers and many leads come and go in my time. With each new management hire there is a need to reinvent the wheel in order to prove their own competence. This is a very tiresome cycle of posturing, ultimately resulting in a “did you get the memo” type situation. This company seems to break middle management frequently. That being said there are opportunities to move up, just be prepared. A few employees used to hold lead or management positions so ask your co-workers.

Spin/pint are very team heavy so make sure you are prepared to work with others. Bake side has more solo tasks. This job has alot of the best parts of a kitchen without some of the worst. Its high energy, its loud, there is music, things move quickly. The flavors can be super complex but it can really be fun. This is a production job so if your aren’t mentally prepared this job can be repetitiously crushing. The schedule is fantastic! 4 days on, 3 off is a huge plus. Working 4 ten hour days made me feel like I had been doing it wrong my whole life.

If you work hard there are frequently opportunities to help another departments (cross training) which can really help if you are getting burned out in your department. Work hard, get involved and S&S has a wealth of knowledge you can tap into. Skills I learned here landed me my next job.

I loved working at Salt and Straw and was lucky enough to be surrounded by an absolutely great team and I think that Salt and Straw has extremely great potential as a company. However, upper management often made decisions on protocol or new features that were extremely unpractical and created an unnecessary burden on the employees executing them without also being properly compensated for the increased workload.  

Another huge issue at Salt and Straw is the lack of transparency with opportunities for job advancement, and it was often handled with an odd amount of secrecy which ultimately created a lot of resentment, frustration, and confusion. Someone would be promised a promotion or be asked to apply for an advancing position only to be later told it wouldn't be possible even if they were qualified. There was also an increasing number of times right before my departure that there would be an issue with team member with numerous people filing reports of misbehavior with no action taken until the issue got increasingly worse or if action did occur the person who reported the issue wouldn't remain anonymous which caused issues. I also noticed that the longer I worked at Salt and Straw, the less it felt like my voice was truly considered and taken seriously when speaking about issues or concerns. Which was in stark contrast to previous years where I felt seen and heard.  

Overall I do believe that Salt and Straw is a much better company than most of the other places I've worked especially at entry level however that isn't to say they aren't without fault and in recent years have more often times than not been shooting themselves in the foot with their constant need to innovate. 

The work can be difficult physical labor added in with demanding customers. The company's kind nature and diversity is a farce.You are lead to believe that this company cares about it's employees but the truth is they don't, and it does show. I've alone been deceived into getting a promotion, "you are our first choice, the first in line", by my store manager to only find out that it had been given to someone else who was only just hired. The nature of the job consists of high school drama, with click-y attitudes who rule the job by forcing out people they do not like and management goes along with it, including HR and the district manager. There are countless stories of people being fired without cause, people being forced to quit due to poor atmosphere, and the assistant managers to corporate not acknowledging the situations and going along with what they "feel" is right. This company is known for not taking care of their employees and silencing the ones who pose as a "threat". They reward the people who do not deserve it, and over look those who have bent over backwards. I've seen assistant managers and shift leads verbally abuse their staff, we cannot rely on HR or the store manager to protect the staffs rights, yet they are protected by corporate by justifying their actions with excuses. Salt and Straw are consistently cutting costs and hours of their employees "to be ecofriendly", but in reality they are losing revenue for poor financial decisions. The company as a whole train us to not abide by standard health regulations (i.e: not wear gloves while handling food, poor hygiene routines) but they rather give us the option to. To sum up this company they bring you in on the idea they are wholesome, but the truth is the job is draining both physically and mentally for their financial gain.

I've worked a few food service jobs and this one is hands down the best one I've worked at but... it's still a food service job. People who get hired at Salt & Straw are always pretty cool and fun, so I never really worry about having bad coworkers or anything. Honestly, I've made some good friends out of this job and really respect and enjoy my relationship with my managers and shift leads. While you still do all the regular food service stuff like clean up, serve, make stuff, etc., it's at least better when you have cool people around you to do it with. There is, however, a huge push to be consistently smiley, friendly, and overly amicable with customers which has definitely gotten tiring. We've had roleplay sessions at store meetings and stuff like that where you are literally required to over explain flavors and be the nicest you can be which I understand but when I'm 4 hours deep into a long shift I'm obviously not going to be rude or mean but I'd prefer not to have to ask every single person how their day was when giving them ice cream or at the register. Typical food service work where you're generally underpaid and overworked but hey, tips are a huge plus here. Overall, great job for temporary working but not somewhere to stay for long. 

Less than two months after being hired for full-time, I agreed to an offer letter that included a handbook that assured me that I would have medical benefits if I averaged at least 20 hours per week. 

Then three things happened that were out of my control. 

First thing, HR sent me a note to enroll in their health care plan. Then, four days after the ACA open-enrollment period had passed, they emailed me to tell me that I did not qualify for benefits because...

Second thing, they dropped my hours from over 30 for the first few weeks, to 20, which wouldn't have been the worst deal if...

Third thing, they increased the qualification requirements for benefits from 20 hours average to 30. 

I never would have left my job and my benefits had I known they would be so callous and damaging. Now I am without healthcare in the middle of the biggest pandemic in many lifetimes and everyone keeps apologizing or saying the company let them down but it hasn't helped me at all. 

The work is easy enough, typical customer service with added sanitations. Pay, when there are hours, is good for the work but if you're not looking for minimal hours then don't work here. I have been told that they hire too many workers assuming that some will quit and then dillutes the amount of hours available so don't ever feel safe if you're scooping there. There are plenty of other low wage positions with more integrity and security. 

You know a job is bad when you can just look at the schedule, and absolutely dread the people you have to work with. For me personally, it was because they refused to work and lived for drama. The pay is what kept me with this company for too long, and at some point it is just not worth the deterioration of your mental health. Customers are often disrespectful, new hires have become increasingly worse and they do not enforce a probationary period, bad employees are well known and never confronted, and the shop never received the basic repairs it desperately needs for the employees to have a decent shift. My most disappointing observation is white people will last along time, regardless of their work ethic. People of color are quickly made and example of. I could not stand the constant disappointment this company has turned into. There is a lot of fakeness, all the way to the top. Tyler, the recipe creator, seems like the only real person. 

Train your managers properly. Salt & Straw is a business, and the need for friendship is killing your business.
Be open to disciplinary action and retraining. Train your managers to properly document in advance. 
The work environment will train drastically once employees are in a supported environment. 

Positive:
We used to have a hardworking team, and the shifts were so smooth. The managers, even then were terrible, but the workers made the place enjoyable. I miss those days.

On a typical work day, you come in, get your apron and hat on, clock in, and check with a lead or manager to see your starting rotation. You stretch a little before you start scooping and get to work scooping and describing the ice cream in front of you.
If you open, you need to get the store up and running. Cleaning the waffle irons, wiping down windows, restocking the pint freezer, dips, merchandise, etc.
If you close, you work as a team and are delegated tasks to clean the shop, the dip cabinets, dishes, and hopefully get out on time.
On an 8-hour shift, you get two 10-minute breaks and one 30-minute break.
I learned that much more work is put into making ice cream and much strength is required to scoop ice cream. 
Management culture is typically pretty ok. They tend to require you to work at least three days a week, even if it's just for 6/5-hour shifts. Typically, most communications are made through the 7-shifts app.
Workplace culture is pretty relaxed and fun.
The hardest part of the job is getting used to scooping. Takes a bit of strength. 
The job's most enjoyable part is connecting with the guests and sampling the new flavors.


Everyone works 4 10 hour shifts each week and about 90% of the time you will end up staying late due to no one understanding how to delegate properly.

The work loads are absolutely unfair. You will constantly be picking up boxes and bags over a 10 hour period leading to injuries. There is always someone injured every single week. The joke (if you want to call it that) is that when someone is hired you have to guess how long they will make it before they burn out or break.

Management is very disconnected from their employees and don't really understand how to guide them. Everyone does their own thing and nothing gets done the same way, ever. Terrible practices for a kitchen.

Walk in at 7AM and you won't be greeted because EVERYONE hates being there. Never a hello, good morning etc. Everyone seems like a zombie and is just going through the motions for the day.

The labor is ridiculous and I wouldn't recommend this level of work for anyone other than a high school or college student looking to make some cash.

Free ice cream is a cool perk, but honestly not worth it.

Especially when they begin to sacrifice quality for quantity. They use canned and frozen products that they have on a constant "thawing schedule". Come on...

Top Job Titles	Average Salary
Ice cream scooper 7 salaries reported	$17.41 per hour
Shift leader 5 salaries reported	$16.69 per hour
Shift coordinator 8 salaries reported	$18.33 per hour
Ice cream maker 8 salaries reported	$16.13 per hour
General manager 2 salaries reported	$30.40 per hour

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