Vantaggi
Georgetown Cupcake is a fast-paced work environment where there is always something new going on - a phone call to answer, a delivery to send out, a custom order to pack. With only a couple years of prior work experience, I was thrown into the deep end right off the bat - managing a staff of 50 people (as part of a team of three managers), making decisions to do with health and safety issues, coordinating deliveries, taking inventory and placing orders for ingredients and paper supplies. In a year and a half, I became a much more competent, confident manager and decision-maker. Although the company was founded in 2008, they still have a bit of a start-up mentality and a proactive employee will have opportunities to make real changes that improve the way the shop - or even the company as a whole - is run. On top of that, Georgetown Cupcake is really the best in the business in terms of high-quality product, and I was proud to come into work every day and help produce beautiful, delicious cupcakes for customers to enjoy as part of weddings, birthdays, baby showers, and other major events. As is common in the retail / restaurant industries, you have to be prepared to adapt to an unconventional (NOT 9-to-5) schedule and to work your butt off on weekends and holidays when everyone else is on vacation or out having fun.
Svantaggi
Even though the kitchen is the engine of the entire operation, Georgetown Cupcake does not have a coherent HR policy in terms of kitchen staffing. Most new hires are the friends or family members of current employees, and the company never has potential candidates queued up in the pipeline despite a high turnover rate, which means the baking staff is always one step away from disaster. Given the extremely early morning hours (1 a.m. start time), the physical nature of the work (lifting 50-lb bags of flour) and the complexity of baking thousands of cupcakes per day from scratch, I also do not believe that the company paid enough to attract and retain skilled, reliable people. As a manager, all this became a huge source of stress and was one of the main reasons I left the company. I never knew when I might receive a phone call at 2 a.m. because two members of the baking staff had an argument or because somebody didn't show up to work. Although I had no direct control over the kitchen hiring process, I often had to ask members of my team to work for weeks at a time without a day off while the higher-ups (who were located in a different city) tried to fill an open position in our store. It was incredibly frustrating to know that, despite having done everything in my power to make the shop run smoothly, all the efforts by me and my staff could be derailed at any time because of our poor HR management.