Running your own coffeehouse can be an exciting, if not exhausting, experience. Many entrepreneurs love to share their passion for coffee with their customers. But customers aren't the only people that business owners must interact with. Employees are another crucial part of your business and can put your whole venture in jeopardy if they aren't good enough.

Finding employees who are a good fit doesn't necessarily have to be like finding a needle in a haystack. Just as with every other step in opening your own coffeehouse, a little planning goes a long way. Setting down a detailed list of qualifications will really help you focus on your ideal candidate and make the selection process go more smoothly.

Once you've found these reliable cashiers, baristas, food prep workers, etc. ... your mission is far from complete. Because finding and training employees takes time and money, keeping employees happy and motivated will make you a much more successful and sane employer. Alternatively, employees who aren't a good fit must also be dealt with properly or you risk not only losing your sanity, but your customers, as well.

ANOTHER PLAN?

Believe it or not, that marketing plan you completed (you did write one, didn't you?) a few months ago, just may come in handy with your recruitment strategy. Asking the same kinds of questions about who you want to work for you as who you want to buy from you will enable you to begin forming a picture of your ideal candidate. So, ask yourself, what specifically are you selling? Who do you want to sell it to? Where will you find these customers, and how will you attract them?

One basic but essential question is: "What is it that I specifically need in an employee?" says Carolyn B. Thompson, president of Training Systems, Inc., an employee consulting firm in Frankfort, Ill., As an example, Thompson asks, are you looking for someone who will have a car because there's no public transportation in your neighborhood? Do you want a teen who's involved in high school activities and shows initiative? Or, do you want a student with limited after-school activities because he may be able to put in more hours?

Remember, too, that actual experience or skills may be less important than overall demeanor and personality. "In fact, for most of the specialty coffee places, it's not a physical skill that you're looking for," Thompson says. "You're looking for: How do they interact with customers? Will they come on time? Can they take instruction? Can they learn fast?"

The core characteristic that employees at Panama Bay coffeehouses must have is a passion for helping other people, says Steve Welty, president of the seven-store chain, based in Walnut Creek, Calif. "We call it smiling from the heart, and if they can smile with their heart, we can teach everything else," Welty says.

In order to gauge the passion potential of candidates, Welty says they're asked a number of questions, such as, "Why do you want to work for this company?"

Welty says his hiring staff looks for both the right answers and the wrong answers. "We look for almost anything but these phrases: `I need a job,' `You would be close to me to go to work,' or `I think it's a cool place.' If they come up with those answers, they're like deal breakers," Welty reveals. Such general answers, he explains, reveal that the candidates view Panama Bay as just another coffeehouse.

"We want to be special," he adds.

Another important ability for employees is the ability to follow directions. When Suzie Jebo and her business partner/husband, Tom, recruited candidates for their coffeehouse, Rock Hill Roasting Company in Rock Hill, S.C., they advertised in newspapers and then set up a business line with a voice mail system to handle the calls.

"On the message, we asked them to leave three simple things," Jebo says. "We asked for their name, for their telephone number and the best time to call. Through that process we were able to weed people out before we even set up interviews."

Those who did not follow these simple directions, Jebo says, were not called back.

WHERE TO LOOK

Once you've made a list of important employee characteristics, your profile will begin to form and will then dictate how you will find these candidates. You may want to advertise in a publication that your targeted employee reads, post a message on the Internet or put up help wanted flyers at local colleges.

Keep in mind, though, that just as word of mouth often works best in advertising your products, it may also work in finding good employees.

Kimberly Day, who opened her first Bean Appetit coffeehouse in Wasco, Ill., about 2 1/2 years ago, says she simply puts the word out that she's looking to hire and candidates come to her.

When a neighbor heard that Day was opening a coffeehouse, the neighbor asked for a job. Likewise, one of Day's regular customers went from ordering coffee to serving it and became Day's first full-time employee.

"I've never had to place an ad," says Day, who opened another location in a nearby town, Batavia, about a year ago and now has two full-time and five part-time employees.

Day's not concerned about an employee's coffeehouse experience. She says you can always teach an employee to make a smoothie or pull a shot. "What's most important to me is that they're pleasant, graceful ... nice to talk to," Day says. "The rest of it falls into place."

While Panama Bay doesn't have a formal recruitment policy, Welty says referrals from current employees are the ideal way to recruit. Employees who refer a candidate receive a monetary reward, around $100, if the candidate is hired, plus more if that new employee stays for 90 days and then one year.

"The motivation is there to always keep your antenna up so that there's more of us looking, rather that just the manager or the team leader in any one store," says Welty, noting that employers should always be on the lookout for good candidates.

FINDERS, KEEPERS

Finding good employees is only part of the mission; keeping them is the other. Just as some of your products may spoil or go stale if they're not taken care of, employees' attitudes may turn sour and they will seek other jobs if they don't feel appreciated.

One way to keep good employees is to offer benefits that meet their needs and wishes. Again, here's where the employee profile comes into play. High school or college-age employees, for example, may be looking for immediate gratification benefits such as discount cards for a local clothing or music store, says Carolyn Thompson, who also lectures and writes about recruitment/retention issues. Single mothers may want health insurance and a retirement plan, she adds. Therefore, it's practical to tailor your benefits to your employees.

"Look at what those people really want and really need and put your time and your money into those things," Thompson advises.

Steve Welty is currently in the process of reviewing his employee benefits plan. Panama Bay currently offers medical benefits to employees who work a minimum of 32 hours. But Welty and his staff are reviewing a cafeteria plan in which employees would select benefits from a menu of choices based on what appeals to them. Welty says such a plan may be more costly to administer, but may be worth it if that's what it takes to keep good employees.

The review was fueled by the employees, says Welty, who have inquired about such benefits as child day care, dental insurance, a 401(k) plan and even higher hourly compensation in lieu of standard benefits.

Welty says he also keeps his employees satisfied by offering raises based on a certification system rather than tenure. Employees are tested periodically on their skill level and knowledge for their positions, whether it's a cashier or a barista. The higher the employee scores on the test, the higher the hourly compensation. "So, they really get to empower themselves for making their own raises come true," Welty explains.

Sometimes, employers can't afford to offer benefits. That, however, doesn't mean there's no way to make employees feel appreciated.

About every six weeks, employees at Rock Hill Roasting have staff meetings during which about three or four of the 13 employees are recognized for great customer service or teamwork, says Suzie Jebo. Employees might be rewarded with movie passes or other similar tokens of appreciation. Each month employees also receive $15 worth of free food from Rock Hill, in addition to a 50 percent discount on those purchases.

Occasionally, in order to show they appreciate and encourage teamwork, the Jebos also take their employees on staff outings to a movie or dinner so employees can get to know each other better. "They really enjoy that. A lot of them are college students and they don't have a lot of money," to spend on entertaining, Jebo says. "And we pay for that."

LETTING GO

Keeping employees happy is not only a nice thing to do, it makes good business sense because hiring and then retraining new staff takes time and money. Of course, keeping on employees who don't measure up can be costly, as well. And, no matter how careful an employer is in selecting an employee, sometimes the relationship just doesn't work out and the employee must be let go.

According to Thompson, terminating an employee must never be done in haste or at times when the employer is angry. Instead, for both legal and sensible reasons, the employee should be given the chance to improve his work. Thompson says that too often, employers, especially small business owners, make the mistake of not saying anything to employees who are not performing adequately for fear that the employee will just leave.

Instead, Thompson says employers should practice constructive communication in trying to resolve the situation. For instance, she advises against saying, "You're making a mess out of things. Customers hate you." Rather, be very specific in relating what the employee is doing and what needs to be changed and offer help. That means saying "Here's what you did. Here's what you need to be doing instead. What guidance do you need from me in order to get there?" Thompson says.

Suzie Jebo has lost employees to graduation, internships and relocations, but she has also terminated two employees. According to her state's law, employers can fire an employee without notice for a three-month period following the hiring. But Jebo still took the time to talk with the employees, discuss their performance and give them a chance to respond.

Dealing with a performance situation quickly is important, Jebo says, because a poor employee can have a negative impact on other employees. Jebo was recently dealing with such a situation where employees were complaining about the poor performance of a co-worker. Jebo planned to discuss privately what the employee had been doing and ask for suggestions from her on how to work it out. "That's a great way to keep people, you know, by caring about them and not treating them like a number," she says.

Kimberly Day suggests having a clear-cut written policy for employees so when the employee is not performing according to those standards, you can simply take out the policy and reinforce the expectations that the employee had been given when initially hired.

"Let your employees know what you expect out of them," she says.

Employees at Panama Bay have a number of chances, anywhere from half a dozen to a dozen, to change their work performance, Welty says. Employees go through a series of formal reviews and more informal conversations to communicate their performance level. Ideally, Welty adds, an employee will know when the job is not working out and take the initiative to find another job or be appreciative of being made to realize that he would be happier in another line of work. That will only happen if the employee understands that despite efforts by the employer to help, the performance is not improving.

"If we've done our job right, the employee will either leave the company before we ask them to leave, or they'll thank us when we ask them to leave," he says. "That's the goal we try to reach."

WHO'S WHO?

Because successful coffeehouse operations are dependent on good customer relations, recruiting and retaining a good staff cannot be overestimated. Take the time to figure out what's important to your operation and then look for employees who will be able to meet those criteria.

Of course, while creating a profile is important because it will focus your selection process and therefore your resources, don't be so inflexible that anyone outside that profile is immediately dismissed as a candidate.

"If someone who isn't in the picture shows up on your doorstep, it's not that you're not going to assess them, you just didn't spend money to try and find them," Carolyn Thompson says. "That is perfectly OK."

Suzie Jebo says she and her husband really appreciate having found a dependable staff. Jebo says her staff provides such great customer service and is so knowledgeable and passionate about coffee that customers often can't tell the employees from the owners.

"And I love that," Jebo says. "I really, really love that."