café manager

cafe assistant

Max Brenner

The days varied depending on the hours worked. I usually worked at night on the late nights. It got busy during Friday and Saturday nights.

I learnt to be quick when serving, Food preparations, and the service and standards for coffee and other drinks. It was a fast paced environment.

There are was always a change in management from the time I was there I had seen and spoken to three area a managers.

It was a chocolate lover's dream job. The culture was fun and inviting to almost all of the customers. 

The hardest part about the job was amount of people on staff, On Friday and Saturday nights we had less staff on when it was at it's peak hour. 

The most enjoyable was seeing customers walk away happy with their service and time spent in the cafe.

The only thing this company is good about is giving employees a first chance and staff training ( depending on the manager you have) 
The desserts are frozen. I've been given green light  from Manager/CEO to use products that have expired. 
The chocolate they use are not good quality one. Anyone that lived or tried overseas chocolate knows the Max Brenner chocolate are not good - purely cocoa mass, sugar and fat. 
UPSELL and rip off their customers are their culture. 
The marketing is outdated so as the shop features. 
The wage is a joke, some people get paid $12 hour and no penalties on weekends/public holidays. 
CEO and owner of Max Brenner are heartless people that think only about profits and clearly don't know how to manage a corporate. The company is having a cash flow problem and SUPERANNUATION had not been paid into employees accounts for at least 7 months. 

Clearly, AVOID IT!!!

Max Brenner's working culture is brilliant, with lot's of highly motivated staff members with full of laughter and joy. But like every work place it has it's pros and cons. 
The pros are that you get to experience varieties of chocolate and desserts, also you get to experience not just hospitality section of it but also retail sections. As you have to up sell products and be able to confidentially explain our products to customers.  
The cons of this place that it is very understaffed and gets a very big rush at certain times, where customers are waiting for an hour for a hot chocolate/ desserts.
Due to this I have gained how to manage people in a fast pace environment, time management planning things ahead, being able to analyse the staff members strengths and weaknesses.

There’s a weird vibe to the store, one staff member in particular just gets close to the higher ups including supervisors and manager, creates a horrible imbalance because staff can no longer complain about that team member without fear for their job safety. The free food is a plus but they’re cracking down on staff meals too, you can send complaints or criticisms all you want but other than an email thanking you, you won’t be seeing any change. The job itself isn’t bad but you could go to any cafe and find a better environment, the environment at this store is toxic and competitive among certain team members. A lot of unfair treatment towards younger staff members and each team member gets treated differently, some better than others. Overall, just fun another place to work.

A typical day at work at Max Brenner for me is to restock items, sell chocolates on the retail area, do cashier and also serve and make food. We do pretty much everything and help each other. I learned to communicate with different customers and how to approach them. The management at Max Brenner is organised and my co workers are friendly. We make sure that we spend time outside work for dinner just to keep the dynamics good. The hardest part of the job for me is closing because I am often in charge of making sure that everything is correct and clean. The most enjoyable part of the job is when you can talk with the customers and they are actually nice to you and talk back to you.

Work was easy to get used to, but when it was busy, it was BUSY. When it wasn't, you might see 1 person in an hour. Was pretty easy-going when I started, but gradually got stricter until many employees actually left for better prospects. While the company claimed to only employ part-time, it was definitely casual, and some months I got no work at all even though 'company policy' promised at least one day a week. Also, some products were difficult to serve, as they were designed with fun and attractiveness in mind instead of practicality. This resulted in a lot of accidents. Ultimately, it wasn't terrible, but it wasn't great either.

Max Brenner is all about making $$ , but employees don't see any of it.

I have experience as a supervisor and manager and the working conditions are poor and unethical.

As a manager (with full time contract) u r expected to work extra hours for FREE. That means that you can work sometimes 12 or more hours per day.

They don't aloud to put extra people in some shifts (even if is crazy busy)

Staff and supervisors have part time contracts and the hourly salary is arround $18/$20

They are extremely hard with the employees shifts and they expect to get as more as you can give for free, and never make any effort to improve the work conditions

the team environment can be fun and nice. The problem is that Max brenner policies are horrrible.

I would arrive at work and prepare the coffee, chocolate and desserts for the day and ensure the cafe was ready for opening. Throughout the day I would make coffee and prepare desserts to be served. I would also ensure the chocolate mixtures were prepared, by melting and forming ganaches.

I learnt about coffee and was able to improve my latte art which was the most enjoyable part of this job.

The hardest part was keeping the staff members happy whilst I was supervising them through a busy shift.

most staff members are lovely and great to work with although the franchise is just run so terribly. I've never experienced such hard working people in such a busy environment working long hours up until 3 in the morning at times while only getting payed less than $11 per hour, no such thing as weekend rates or different rates if working late shifts either. Every month their is always several complaints about the food such as being expired or finding bugs in their meal which is absolutely disgusting.

Working here is going to be your worst nightmare. I read the reviews unfortunately AFTER I got the job, and learned the hard way. No one here is going to support you, you will go months untrained but will still be expected to somehow know everything. Majority of staff are disgustingly rude and hateful, they will isolate you and disregard all instructions. The amount of supervisors that have come and left within a few months is understandable. Working here is the worst mistake you could possibly make.

Top Job Titles	Average Salary
Café manager 19 salaries reported	$68,039 per year
Cafe assistant 1 salary reported	$67,500 per year

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