Earlier this year, I went to a Starbucks event where Cliff Burrows, President of Starbucks Americas, gave a short and informal presentation. He talked for several minutes, and for about one minute of his presentation, he reminisced back to the time when he was going through the Starbucks partner immersion experience. As many may know, Starbucks requires a store-level immersion experience for all new executives. There’s an article from CIO.com here about Stephen Gillett’s immersion. (Stephen Gillett is the EVP CIO at Starbucks.) This has been a tradition at Starbucks for at least a decade, if not more.
Cliff Burrows did his immersion stint at the Queen Anne neighborhood Starbucks. (I’m not actually sure how long the immersion lasts.) Here is the audio of him talking about that, and I’m sorry the quality of the audio isn’t too fabulous. At times there’s a bit of laughter from the audience nearly drowning Cliff out!
It’s less than one minute long, and it is very clear that Cliff is having some fun with the audience, and he is showing his sense of humor, but even so, I think it’s a gem of a minute of Cliff talking:
Enjoy!
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LOL! Can you imagine getting a latte made by Cliff? How cool!
My district manager is the best! She helped us on Black Friday, but wore some beautiful high heels (she always has gorgeous shoes on.) Its so funny watching her prep whip cream, clean some dishes, or sweep the cafe in those high heels! Love this little tid bit about Cliff!
Would have loved to hear more of the Cliff talk. I can just imagine how neat it would be to meet him and have a drink with him. I actually have never seen the DM for our area behind the counter making drinks or at the register only behind the counter doing inventory or such. What a neat idea this immersion program. Camspi your DM sounds great and so involved. Off topic a bit but how often should a DM come to a store? I still think SB should develop focus groups with customers especially the ones that are the loyal and regular ones for a particular store. Great piece Melody thanks.
@Cam and @purple1 – I tend to think it’s great to hear Starbucks leadership talk. I suspect though that this blog post will appeal to partners more than customers, because definitely many many customers don’t know who Cliff is! I don’t expect it to get many comments, but I still think it’s a worthwhile one minute audio to listen to.
@Cam – I love hearing stories about your district manager! She’s like a tv character star dressed up no matter what she is doing! Very likable character!