Erica Speaks about Hospitality

Favorite drink: My employees joke that I like iced chocolate cortados. I love sweet drinks and I judge coffeeshops on their sweet drink selection because it’s the most approachable thing on the menu. Sometimes you go to a shop and the only sweet drink on their menu is a mocha, and it’s not sweet at all, and it’s like, ‘who are you serving here?’ And you’re probably going to shame someone when they order a vanilla mocha, or add sugar at the bar. Have something sweet on your menu. Just do it.

Favorite album to play at work: Right now, its Lemonade. We have a music policy that only 10% of music can be centered around whiteness. Because that’s one of your first cues, when you walk into a place, if you are welcome there. I love playing Latin music too. Someone once made a joke while waiting in line, like, ‘oh, this is the worst Taco Shop ever,’ cause we don’t sell tacos, right? That stuck with me.

“When I was in high school I didn’t really have a lot of friends, so I would walk down to the local Starbucks and hang out with all the baristas there. They were so nice- they were older and when I came in they would always ask how my day was. They thought that I was a really cool person, even though no one else thought I was cool. When I went in they would say ‘oh my god it’s so nice to see you! Let me make you your caramel Frappuccino. How was school today?’ and they would listen to me, cause they were usually bored around that time. As soon as I was old enough, I applied to get a job there, and I was pretty stoked when I got it. I thought it was the best job in the world.

I wanted a job there so bad and the manager who hired me was really intense. I just wanted her to like me. We sit down at the interview- and I was super nervous- and she asks me a bunch of questions and then says ‘how do you feel about cleaning?’ and I said ‘listen, I’m Latina, I was bred to clean.’ And she just goes ‘oh my god, you’re hired,’ and starts laughing. I was like ‘I’m in!’

She demanded excellence and what I loved about Starbucks is that it was all about efficiency. I loved that strategic mindset. We had a drive-through and they would count how many cars an hour you could get through. They would set goals, and I just got so fast at it and I am so social- with that combination, I thrived. I loved it and I thought I was going to work there forever.

Eventually I got put on a turn-over crew to go to another location that was struggling. My manager had been sent to a store in the nearby mall to clean it up and get it back to working order and she asked me to go with her. She promised me fulltime hours, but it was a longer commute, further from my house. The existing staff had a hard time with all the new people coming in. I didn’t get along with the existing employees, AND I wasn’t getting fulltime hours. One week I only got 12 hours. I talked to a shift lead about not getting the hours I was promised, and I ended up complaining and venting to her about a bunch of things. I didn’t know she was going to tell my manager everything I had said. The next day I got called into the office by my manager and she says ‘I don’t let people talk shit in my store. I transferred you out- you are back at the other store.’ I cried and I felt so bad. She said ‘If you had a problem, you should have just come and talked to me about it. I would have fixed it.’ Looking back I know that if I had told her, she would have heard me. But she had really intense energy, and confrontation is hard- going to talk to anyone about a problem is scary- no matter who it is with 

Its funny because now I am in a position of power and my energy is really intense and scary. Even though I am not an angry person, and I never yell or get mad at anyone, my energy is intense. I have had employees not talk to me because they thought I was going to get mad. I am not angry ever- this is just how I talk. I am super into the Enneagram and I am an 8, wing 7. They are the most misunderstood women in the Enneagram. I am The Challenger. It is said to be, especially with women, like ‘oh they are a bitch.’ Something about 8s is if we love something, we get angry with it. It’s out of love and passion. That is how we operate.

Although I am in a position of power, I still struggle with having to lead and direct people who have more privilege than I do. If I am in the position over power of a white guy, I struggle to be the one with the privilege and power in that situation. For me, I feel that if I was a man doing the same exact things that I do as a woman, it would be fine. I don’t think anyone would think of me as angry, or bitchy, or anything else. But because I am a woman, there is a different dynamic there, that I’ve had struggles with. Mostly in Portland, where there are predominantly white people, white people have a very specific culture. It feels very different for me- I am working within a very different culture than my own. You don’t talk about very deep things-especially with your family- it’s a very cool environment, don’t make waves, just be a good person, keep your head down, don’t make a scene, be nice. And that’s just not where I am from. We are at Christmas screaming over who owns the TV in the living room. There is a cultural part at play, being a Latina woman. It’s a different and weird balance. 

I worked for Starbucks in California for a really long time, and then I transferred to a location in Portland. There I had a manager that completely disregarded almost all the rules of the company, and that was really hard for me. I came from that background of excellence, and then you have this manager who just decides what the rules are, and that really bothered me. I would call my district manager about her, and say ‘ hey, she’s not following the rules,’ and he said ‘oh, ok, well do you need to be transferred out?’ and I responded, ‘no, I just want her to follow the rules.’ And he said ‘huh, ok, well, she is a good manager... But I will address your concerns…’ and nothing ever happened with it. She would throw temper tantrums in the bathroom- I remember one day somebody put in their notice. And after they left, she was in the bathroom kicking and screaming at the door. It was intense. I also lived over 30 minutes from that location and she kept on scheduling me for 4am shifts. I would have to wake up at 3, and I was constantly oversleeping my alarm. It was really frustrating. It wasn’t fun at that point.

One day I decided to go downtown and start exploring my new city, Portland. I went to a coffee shop- it was a really popular roasting company that I had never heard of- and I walked in and tried to order a caramel macchiato. The guy behind the counter looked at me, kind of scoffed, and said ‘we don’t have that.’ So I thought, well shiiit, uhh, you got chocolate? And he said yeah, so I ordered a mocha and they handed me my drink and there was like a leaf on it, and I asked ‘how did you do that?!’ The lady just looked at me- I remember her, she was really beautiful and slender, and had this apron on- she just looked really cool. I said again ‘how did you do that?!’ and she sort of just made a sound like huh, and just kept going. She didn’t stop to tell me anything! I took a picture of my drink and posted it to Facebook. I still have that picture. 

At that point I felt angry, like why didn’t Starbucks ever tell me about this?! They had already blown my mind about coffee and about customer service. And then I felt cheated, like why didn’t you tell me there was more? And then I just couldn’t work there anymore.

At the time I was living outside of Portland and in my town there was a small Hawaiian themed coffee shop. It was so cool. It was messy and eclectic - it was also a gift shop- and they had all these fun flavors. They had all the same things that Starbucks had, except they had a different espresso machine. And I thought to myself, oh I could do this. I could work here. It seems like a club that I want to be a part of. I’m from a place where we didn’t have local shops. It was just such a new thing to me, like oh wait someone can independently own a coffee shop? It blew my mind.

I got hired there and I was really good at it. They didn’t know latte art there but said I could teach myself. The owner gave me some tips. He told me about making a whirlpool and listening for the ‘smooth jazz’ sound, instead of ‘hard rock.’ I kept trying and failing, and it took me a really long time. I remember one time I did something and was like ‘oh my god it looks like Jesus!’ I regret not taking a picture of that. I learned a lot from working there. This coffee shop for me was the next step.

There were definitely some challenges working there too. The management style was intense. If you did something wrong, there was a note hanging up for you in the backroom for everyone to see. It was very shocking and embarrassing. It was a husband and wife team, and one of them would tell you to do one thing, and the other one would come in later and tell you to do something completely different. It was confusing about who, what, where, why and when. There were systems that you were supposed to follow, but they weren’t always communicated. Again, the husband/wife dynamic where they both want, or look, for different things-  like the husband would call in and say, ‘hey- she’s coming in’ and we would know to clean certain things that were really important to her.

I did love working there though. The customers were all regulars since it was a small town. And I really did love the owners. I had this relationship with them that was really special. The husband- I worked with him the most- would answer every single question I had. And really thoughtfully too. I would ask ‘why do we do this? Why do we do it that way? How do you run your business? What do you do with the money after we count it?’ I would just question him all day long, and it didn’t seem like he ever got tired of my questions. He would answer all them. A time came where they were like, ‘hey there is this thing called Coffee Fest in Seattle, and we are going to pay for you to go.’ It was me and a coworker, and we all got to go. Coffee Fest blew my mind. I just couldn’t believe it. There was something called Barista Magazine?! And a latte art competition?! It felt so BIG. I just had no idea I was part of a whooole industry. I went to classes about how to open your own coffeeshop and I took so many notes. I still have all of them. There are so many things that I learned at that coffee fest- it’s one of the reasons I know anything. I just listened and I learned. That was in 2010. I loved it- I was hooked and I had my eyes set. I went to that class on how to open your own coffee shop, and they talked about all the costs. They said ‘you’re gonna need 100,000-250,000 to open up a coffee shop’ and that really stuck with me. I was making minimum wage plus tips, I was 18 and I thought ‘I’m never gonna be able to do that.’

A couple of years went by- I had left that coffee shop in order to make more money as a nanny- and we had a family emergency, so I ended up quitting all my jobs to be home. I had gotten married in that time. About a month later though, I heard from my old bosses at that shop. They called me to tell me that their manager had just walked out and that they needed help, and if I had any time to help them. I told them that I actually had a ton of free time, and I started driving out to that shop to work for them again. I still really loved the shop and the regulars, but the shop really wasn’t doing so well. It was pretty slow, and the employees seemed disinterested- it wasn’t the same shop I had worked for. They had gone through some hard times and you could tell that the owners were pretty checked out.

So I asked them what was going on, like what are they doing with this shop? And the owner said, ‘well, we should sit down and talk about it.’ We went out to coffee somewhere else and basically he says to me ‘we don't want this coffee shop anymore. We really need to get rid of it. But our church meets inside and we still have a year left on our lease. We want to find someone who will take the coffee shop off our hands, take the lease off our hands, but let our Church still meet in the building. Do you know anyone who would want to do that?’

And I said ‘yes, I know someone who wants to do that.’

And so basically, then we had to work out a purchase agreement. I was only 21 years old and three months newlywed! The shop was also still Hawaiian themed, and I had to find the funds to make it my own- I needed to paint it and clean it up. I got help from family and friends, we closed for 6 days total because I couldn’t afford to be closed any more than that, and then we reopened and relaunched. My husband didn't know anything about coffee or anything, but he said ‘just tell me what to do to help you’ and so he was in there with me from open to close every single day, 7 days a week ,except when he had to go to college. It was just the two of us running it for a while. We opened March 8th, 2013. It just turned 6.

A lot has changed in that time. At one point a few years ago, I decided that I needed to focus on finding a new location. I wanted to be in Portland. I ended up connecting with this woman who has a meal delivery service, and she needed a commercial kitchen for her business. She posted on Facebook asking if anyone wanted to share a kitchen with her. And I asked ‘can my café run out of the front of it?’ and she said, ‘yeah.’  Maybe four months later we signed this lease. The Arrow PDX was born in June of 2017.

It’s been great. At first, I thought Portlanders were gonna be really hard to serve. I got really used to serving country folks at my other café. I got used to that type of interaction and I thought moving my business to Portland, I'd be dealing with a lot of snooty hipsters all the time, that knew espresso and that would know a good latte. It’s a lot of pressure, and I felt so much stress to make sure the space looked perfect. Every decision felt final. I wanted the counters to be black, but all my hipster friends would be like, ‘I don’t know, do you think it will be too dark with the blue wall??’ You get all these opinions about what needs to be, and all these fears like, oh people aren’t going to like it, or it’s not going to go well or jive right. But then we opened, and we have literally the nicest customers I've ever met in all of my career, here in this area, in this neighborhood in particular. And I don't know if all shops are like that in Portland or not, but it is been amazing how much we love this neighborhood, and just how sweet everyone has been.

Something else that I was worried about is that this is a gentrified building. The first thing I did when I knew we were gonna open here was to find community events that were focused on people of color. I commissioned a wonderful black artist to paint something for the café. I started going and showing up and just attending different things and then I started making friends with people of color. At one event, I met this woman named Cole. I went up to her and said ‘I'm sorry to bug you, but my name is Erica and I just bought the space on the MLK & Alberta corner, and I feel like maybe I'm intruding in the wrong neighborhood, and maybe I shouldn’t be here and I would love to hear your input.’ We talked about it - on one hand, this is the space that The Divine, or fate, or whatever you believe in sent my way- it just couldn't have worked out more perfectly- but that can’t be my reason for being here. I am Latina, but this is a black neighborhood, and this is a gentrified area. I asked her what she thought, and she was so gracious with me. She basically said ‘you’re doing the right thing by making friends and being here and showing up and listening. We’re so happy to have you.’ Not that I thought she was the spokesperson for the neighborhood, but it turns out she is very involved in the community now that I know her! She has a vibe about her that you could talk to her and years later, she just opened two businesses across the street from us and we see her all the time. I love her and appreciate her and her family so much. 

I want to make friendships, and I want to make relationships, and I want to make sure that my space is welcoming to everybody. I draw a lot from my own personal culture and just from my experience with people- I think Portland is full of a lot of white introverts, which was really off-putting for me at first. It was kind of confusing, because I didn’t understand- they never wanted to talk to me, but they showed up every day. And so for me, I just want to connect with people, like actually connect with them. I started by getting rid of all the generic café language. I just talked with my employees about that today. You never say ‘I'll be right with you.’ You don't ever have to say it. How about the art of loud communication? We're not afraid to yell across the room to talk to somebody, and in doing so, we’re actually talking to everyone in the room. So I just explained, if I'm at the bar and someone is waiting at the register, I am still talking with them, even if I'm yelling, and also connecting and making eye contact with every person in the room because they're listening to me, and they are listen to my story also. I know it. I'm actually talking to five different people, and letting myself be vulnerable and allowing people to get to know me. While also making sure the person at the register feels seen and heard. Every single person in the room will leave that day feeling like they connected.

There's an art to hospitality and being fully yourself- people respond well to someone being vulnerable, honest and genuine. Sharing stuff about myself helps open the door for other people to share about themselves. People don't often make conversation. They'll just stand there waiting for their drink, right? I’ll ask them how they are doing, and they’ll just say ‘fine.’ So I will start into a story like ‘oh man, yesterday I went to my kindergarten informational meeting with my kid. I have a five-year-old, I can’t believe she is going to be in kindergarten. But also I hate school, so I kinda want her to drop out already.’ I just start talking about myself, and then they are engaged. We put the pressure on the customer to talk about themselves sometimes, and this way it takes that pressure off of them. I hire with this in mind- people who are willing to do that, that are willing to put themselves out there for customers in the most genuine way. I want genuine connection, and so I hire people who are willing to follow my lead and get into it. A black Portlander told me recently, gentrification isn’t good- but maybe it wouldn’t be as bad if people actually just said hello to you when they crossed you on the street. I know that is a huge over-simplification and gentrification is a big topic, but that line stuck with me because it reminds me that it’s all about that genuine connection to the humans around you. Seeing people. Caring about them. 

For me, hiring is all about honesty and vulnerability from the start. From the interview. I don't interview them to see if I like them, I interview them to see if they can handle what I have to offer. I try to be very blatant and honest in the interview about what the job is and then I say, ‘I don't know if I can offer you this job, but I want you to go home and think about whether or not you would accept this job and what this entails.’ Then on the first day we talk about again- about the environment, about the relationship, about how it works. And one of those things is talking about how long I want them to stay and what I need from them. I say ‘I need you to be here for a year. At least. I need you to tell me that you can be here for a year.’ The thing about team work environments is that we need safety and security. We need to know that we're safe and if your teammates are constantly leaving you all the time, you do not feel safe and secure in your work environment. You create these relationships and get attached to your co-workers, and then they put in a two-week notice. It puts you in a bad spot, it stresses out your team, its hard on the environment. So I like to ask straight up ‘can you be here for a year?’ I can’t enforce that, it’s not an enforceable law- and it's not even like a hard-and-fast. I will not hate you if you leave before year. But it’s just the question- can you be here for us? Good relationships take work. No matter who it's with. With your boss, your coworker, your partner- anybody. It takes work. I'm willing to put in the work to keep you here for a year. Are you willing to put in the work too?

During an interview I had a potential hire ask me what happens if I am the one exhibiting unsafe behavior. No one had ever asked me that. And I had to think about it, like what if I'm making someone feel unsafe, cause I am the top person. So I said, ‘if I am being messed up, you should out me on Facebook and Instagram. You should call me out because that's the only accountability owners have.’ Accountability from the community. I tell them, ‘here’s a list of people in the community I hang out with and they love me, and I love them. If I'm being shitty, you should go and tell them because they would actually confront me on it because they’re good people.’ I think they would love me enough to advocate against my behavior, if it was not good.

Some of the work for me is getting over that initial fear of power. No matter what kind of boss I am, it’s still scary to come and talk to me. The relationship carries a power imbalance. But I need my employees to come and talk to me. I cannot read minds. I can do my best to feel out situations, but I cannot know everything and so if there's a problem I need them to come and talk to me and how do you do that? How do you make that less scary for people?

We have policies in place where I give up my right to fire people unless it's for three really specific things, and I make those three things clear. If you have a problem and you need to come and talk to me, you will not get fired. I will not fire you if I don't like you, I will not fire you if I'm just having a hard time with you. You will not get fired on the spot for anything except for three specific things. That helps balance the power a little bit because then they know that I'm willing to put in the work too to keep them around. I also give my employees permission to not have to sit down with me and have a conversation. Instead I give them permission to text me about hard things. That's okay. It can be scary to talk to somebody, and sometimes people need the option to have some distance. If you're upset about something that happens and you need to get it off your chest, you can text me. There might be a point in that text where I say ‘Okay. I want to talk about this with you. Let's just sit down and talk about it.’ And then we can breathe. 

I try to be really direct about my management style, like ‘hey, I correct on the spot. I’m never mad at you unless I say ‘hey, I'm mad.’ In six years of owning a business I have fired only two people. What do you do, though, for example, if someone's late all the time. We have the thing called ‘notice.’ I will correct you two or three times about it, and then when I start to feel angst or whatever, I say ‘hey, I'm frustrated about this. I need you to fix this.’ If they agree, I send them an email and say, ‘okay we talked about this. You heard me and we are on the same plane now.’ Then if it happens again, I put them on notice. If you are late within the next 30 days, I'm going to fire you on day 30. It gives someone the opportunity to make it right and we can move on if they can fix it. We're good. I don’t hold grudges. But in that 30 days, if they do show up late then they know they have time to find another job. They're not just going to lose their job in a day. How can I expect them to come and talk to me and not be afraid of me, if I have this power over them to change their life in an instant? I hire amazing people and if they don't thrive here, that's okay. It's not a life failure. They're just not thriving here. They will thrive somewhere else. Like let's go find you another job. Where do you want to work? Tell me what you want to do? What are you struggling with? I can try and help you move on and find a place where you're going to thrive.

I think when people, employees, feel genuinely loved and that they belong here, they are way more comfortable being vulnerable and having genuine interactions with customers- that’s what makes us different. But if they're constantly scared that they're going to mess up, or that they are gonna get fired or piss someone off, it’s harder to have those relationships and to be happy. I want everyone to feel happy in their job and if I notice that they're not happy, I talk to them. I ask what’s going on, or if there is something I can do to help them feel better at work. And you know, maybe they made a year commitment - that verbal commitment- and that's haunting them and I tell them when they make that commitment if something comes up in the meantime, I just need to have a conversation about it. If you're like, ‘hey, I actually don't like working here,’ that's okay. One of the hardest things for me is when an employee goes and finds another job without talking to me and then puts in a two-week notice. They have full right to do that. And that is standard. But it hurts, and it is hard emotionally. For me and for the whole team.

My advice for people wanting to get into coffee, or for baristas looking for a good place to work: find a shop that matches who you are as a person and don't pick a shop just because you feel like it's cool or just because there's opportunity there. Maybe you build up a shop in your mind, like that is THE place you want to work. But we all have stuff that we're not good at and we all have things that we fail at. I try to be upfront and honest about what those things are, but still it can feel different when you’re in it. And not every shop does that, and you find out later, or you work there for a year and you regret it. Ask really good questions in your interview. Ask how they handle conflict, ask about the work environment and believe them when they tell you the negatives and if they don’t say any negatives, don’t believe them.”

Looking back over her career Erica has this to say: “I want people to understand that my story is not the norm and they should not compare their story to my story. What happened to me was a one-in-a-million chance and I'm 28 years old. This is not normal for me to have this career and success at 28 years old. No one should compare themselves to me and I can't even say I would recommend to do what I did because it's been extremely hard and all consuming. I think sometimes people will be like, ‘wow, you're so successful at 28, oh my gosh, and you’re a mom.’ This worked out for me but it’s hard and I struggle with lots of things you can’t see. But when I think of one word to describe my coffee career, truly, it’s a miracle.”