None
Do not consider any position at the headquarters of this awful place; seeing how other departments drive employees away is simply despicable.
The manager is incompetent, and you can tell him directly.
1. The company’s entire system is extremely chaotic, and many managers are parachuted in.
2. Because the system is chaotic, it is also unclear who is responsible or whom to approach when there is a problem.
3. The new manager doesn’t understand the situation and shirks responsibility.
During the interview, first find out whether it is a company-operated store or a franchise store. Company-operated stores are more standardized; franchise stores depend on the owner.
The headquarters is seriously understaffed. The company is developing too quickly, and the managers cannot keep up, but there are also many opportunities.
You need to accept that this is not a place to settle into until retirement. However, the owner is just very strange and unlike a typical boss—but bonuses are paid when the company makes money.
It is just like going to war: there is order amid the chaos, and people come and go. If you can get a handle on things, you can find your own place here.
1. The colleagues I encountered were all very nice and helped and supported one another.
2. You can learn basic coffee and beverage preparation, as well as light-meal preparation skills.
*Full-time position experience
1. Being on standby during split shifts is the norm. You cannot leave the workplace to rest, and overtime pay is not necessarily provided (only when business performance is good). The total working hours can be as long as 12 hours.
2. There are only 6 actual days off per month. On two of those days off, there is a high chance that the supervisor will arrange for you to support another store. You cannot refuse or request leave unless you find someone yourself to cover your shift.
3. Staffing shortages remain unaddressed for long periods. Twelve-hour standby shifts and closing shifts every day are the norm.
Black card holders get 20% off
Colleagues are easy to get along with
Close to home
I work in the production department. Things were fairly good at first, and the senior staff carefully taught us quite a few relevant skills and areas of knowledge. However, due to management issues, the plant was later relocated elsewhere, and that was when the problems started to multiply. One ridiculous mess after another followed: when the plant’s wastewater system broke down and we couldn’t use the water, we had to go back to the original plant to wash things; waste oil had to be scooped up, tied into individual bags with garbage bags, frozen, and then discarded—and anything that hadn’t frozen into a solid block couldn’t be thrown away; when the sludge tank in the wastewater system was full, it had to be bagged up and discarded again, but we were expected to stop halfway through processing ingredients to deal with it. Even after the day’s schedule was finished, and when it was almost time to get off work, supervisors would ask us to do all kinds of pointless tasks, such as scrubbing the drainage ditches or helping the warehouse department receive deliveries. When there was still a pile of work left on the day’s schedule, supervisors would ask us to make experimental samples unrelated to the schedule first, then let it drag on and complain about how it could take so long. On top of that, the administration department kept changing the shipping schedule, and even though we followed it, the supervisor still yelled at us for no reason. There are plenty of other ridiculous things like this. And let me complain about one more thing: I joined in the first place because I heard salaries were increased quickly here, but it’s been nearly one to two years and I still haven’t received a raise. They said my salary would be adjusted after one year, but apart from the NT$1,000 increase when I moved from probationary to permanent status, I haven’t gotten a damn thing. I’ve asked my supervisor for an answer, but there’s still no answer to this day…
The following is written from the perspective of someone working full-time at a company-operated store. Please refrain from criticizing if this does not suit you; this is an objective account.
1. When you have a good store manager, they will genuinely guide you and may occasionally speak up for you. They are willing to take responsibility for staff shortages, allowing you to work with peace of mind.
2. The work environment is pleasant, and colleagues get along well (subjective impression).
3. You learn all kinds of basic survival skills (washing vegetables, preparing ingredients), making food, preparing drinks, chatting with customers, handling payments, coffee-related skills, checking inventory, placing orders, receiving stock, and closing out the daily accounts. (In short, you have to know how to do everything.)
4. Four fixed days off per month (at most two can be holidays).
5. There are standard SOPs that you have to memorize!
6. Colleagues help one another.
7. One meal and one drink (depending on your working hours).
8. When it is quiet, it is really quiet; when it is busy, it is really busy.
The following points are based on comparisons with my past experience in the fast-food industry:
1. It is stated that there are eight days off per month, but you may not necessarily get all eight (because of staff shortages).
2. If there is no explicit notice that support is needed, you may suddenly be scheduled for a support shift. Once the shift is posted, it is treated as an order, and you cannot refuse.
3. Overtime every month—an overwhelming amount of it! (Depending on the position.) Because of staff shortages, you can only be forced to work overtime, from opening until closing. (Regular customers will be able to tell.)
4. There are many customers but not enough staff. Customers do not understand, employees become emotionally exhausted, attitudes worsen, and complaints are inevitable. (This is a word of preparation for anyone considering coming here.)
5. Although there are standard SOPs, each person’s teaching methods and standards differ because of individual habits. (It is exhausting.)
6. The beginner’s adjustment period is “intense.” Because there are not enough staff, they will hope that you can learn quickly and work independently, but since everyone is different, a lot depends on your ability to adapt.
7. You need to know how to do many things; one person is used as many, and there are no fixed positions.
In fact, the disadvantages are too numerous to list. Everything above is based on my personal perspective, along with reactions I have observed from customers. If you want to come here to learn, you can, but you need to be “mentally prepared.” The work is hard, and customers can leave you very confused; likewise, they may not understand you. Still, here you can truly experience the spirit of “teamwork”: helping and coordinating with one another. Being able to work in unity with a group of people may be one of the experiences that is hardest to find in today’s society.
Warehouse application experience
1. The current Sanchong warehouse supervisor has a clear mind.
2. The salary is slightly low, but it should be worth trying if you have no experience.
3. The division of work is detailed, so you generally do not need to handle very trivial tasks.
4. The warehouse supervisor will explain things until you understand, so feel free to ask questions.
5. Fixed days off on Sundays; Saturdays are on a rotating schedule.
When you enter, first take an internal résumé form and fill it out.
After that, a supervisor will conduct a direct interview. The interviewer will briefly ask about your past experience to determine the salary.
With two years of experience, the starting offer is NT$29,000; after the probationary period, there is an additional NT$1,000–3,000.
There are other bonuses: store opening (a few hundred to around NT$1,000), freezer allowance (+NT$1,500), performance bonus (currently not paid due to the pandemic), and forklift allowance. None of these are paid regularly. The warehouse’s internal teams rotate, so you will not receive the freezer allowance continuously.
The interview will start by discussing points 1–3. If the salary is unacceptable, the process will not continue:
1. Salary 2. Sorry, I forgot 3. Job duties
The HR staff’s attitude was very casual, but I dealt directly with the supervisor, so I did not have a bad impression.
The warehouse supervisor was still normal in August 2022. When asked questions during the interview, they provided detailed answers.
Overall, the warehouse interview experience was fairly OK.
Working at a company-operated store, I received all the basic labor and health insurance coverage required. I was also able to learn all the coffee-related knowledge available during work.
The company disregards multiple provisions of the Labor Standards Act and simply exploits newcomers who do not understand their rights. Even after the work schedule has been set, they may ask you to leave early on the day of your shift if business is poor. It is normal to earn over 20 fewer hours’ worth of wages in a month than the hours listed on the schedule. The Labor Standards Act stipulates that if an employer lets an employee leave early, the employer must still pay the wages for the agreed-upon hours; see Article 487 of the Civil Code.
Employees are also forced to ride a scooter to work, supposedly because that is necessary to make deliveries??? The salary does not include compensation for renting my personal scooter. If I am involved in an accident during a delivery and get injured, the company may not be able to avoid paying compensation for my injuries, but will the company fully cover damage to the scooter? Will the company help cover the relevant insurance I purchased personally? It should be understood that accident insurance premiums are calculated based on occupational risk class. If an accident is not truthfully reported, the insurance company may refuse to pay the claim. Delivery work is at least occupational risk class 3, and the insurance premiums are much higher than those for the class 1 or 2 occupations associated with normal work in a store. The company requires employees to use their own scooters for deliveries but provides no comprehensive supporting measures.
Store employees can get a 20% discount.
After working four hours, you are provided with one meal—so small it barely fills your stomach or even gets between your teeth—and then you have to keep working while still hungry, because the break is “20 minutes of staggered rest per person.”
So there is basically no time to get anything else to eat.
Hmm, it looks like a disadvantage disguised as an advantage :)
I was hired as a part-time store employee. Later, I had an argument with the store supervisor after we disagreed, and the store manager abused their position by scheduling me for two and a half months of leave by myself. The district manager and area manager simply turned a blind eye, intending to force me to quit and resign voluntarily. But they did not expect me to be stubborn enough not to resign. They still had to pay my labor and health insurance, and because I had not worked even ten hours in the entire two months, the company also had to cover the employee-paid portion (although the employee-paid portion was only a few hundred dollars).
Later, HR could not stand by and watch anymore, so they called me to headquarters under the pretext of having a discussion, when in reality they wanted to trick me into signing an agreement to accept termination. If I signed it, I would only receive a small severance payment.
I proposed a severance amount (all based on documented and verifiable figures—not an exaggerated amount like the one- or two-million-dollar alimony claims sometimes seen in the news). HR later said they did not have the authority to approve it, so I said I would go to labor-management mediation. It did not matter whether they agreed or not: if mediation succeeded, I would receive more; if it failed, it would still be worth trying.
That said, how much severance could a part-time employee who had only worked for a few months really get? Add to that the pitifully low number of hours during the pandemic, and the severance was even more meager. However, I had signed a labor contract before starting work that guaranteed a certain number of hours. Young college students in their early twenties who take part-time jobs generally do not pay attention to contracts: someone puts a piece of paper in front of you and tells you to sign it, so you sign it.
But since the company had violated the Labor Standards Act first, it had to compensate me with more severance than usual.
Still, the job depends on what kind of coworkers you encounter, so you cannot unfairly dismiss the entire company based on one case. But after meeting HR, I believe Louisa Coffee is, from HR down to the store managers, undeniably a company that is rotten beyond repair. When a company is riddled with this many toxic employees, you can probably tell what kind of quality its owner has.
You can learn (basic) coffee knowledge, latte art, and pour-over brewing. Suitable work for part-time employment.
The year-end bonus is laughable. You’ll be exhausted if you encounter a bad store manager. The pay is low. The popular training courses organized by the company are basically out of reach. If you want to learn latte art or pour-over brewing, there’s hardly anyone who can teach you—you can only learn by watching YouTube.
You can drink unlimited coffee and learn how to brew coffee yourself.
The work is mainly an internal office role at the headquarters. During the interview, I was told that the job would involve responsibilities in area A, but after joining, I was assigned responsibilities in area B. I essentially had no opportunity to work on A at all. I raised this with my supervisor, who brushed it off and reassured me that it was only a transitional period. However, I later discovered that management had defined the position as a B role from the very beginning, which made me feel deceived into joining the company. During the interview, my supervisor said that because the company’s business was developing so rapidly, employees might need to work overtime when necessary, but the company would pay overtime in accordance with the Labor Standards Act. Yet when I submitted an overtime request to meet a project deadline, my supervisor ultimately rejected it on the grounds that overtime was only necessary due to insufficient ability, effectively making it difficult for employees to receive overtime pay.
One employee meal and one drink are provided.
Working full-time at a directly operated store
The company is expanding its stores rapidly and is severely understaffed, but all the company does is tell us to hang in there a little longer. They said they would give us bonuses, but they never did. When employees asked the manager, the manager acted as if they had no idea what bonus we were talking about and said, “I haven’t even received mine yet—what makes you think you should get one?” In the end, after dragging it out for more than three months, they said the boss had decided not to give the bonuses.
The schedule assigns 10.5-hour shifts. When I reported overtime, I discovered that more than NT$1,000 in overtime pay was missing at the end of the month. When I asked the manager about it, they replied that they did not approve it because they disliked the reason I wrote for the overtime… (The reason I wrote was: “scheduled shift.”)
The schedule is arranged so that I have to work overtime, as if I were the one deliberately causing the overtime. The store is open until 6:00, but if nobody works overtime, there will be no employees in the store after 5:00.
My pay was short for three consecutive months. Every time I asked about it, they said they would make up the difference the following month.
If you forget to clock in or out, you have to submit a paper form for the missed punch. If the manager is too slow to approve it, that day’s wages and overtime pay will not be paid; they simply tell you they will pay it the following month. For such a large publicly listed company, they sure do like delaying employees’ pay.
The company’s systems are immature, and the rules keep changing. Managers also forget to communicate the changes, resulting in inconsistent information from store to store.
When a customer complaint occurs, the manager will curse people directly in the group chat without bothering to find out what happened—scolding first and asking questions later.
The boss’s newly established gym also requires female Louisa Coffee employees to attend the opening ceremony, while the male employees apparently were not even informed about the opening.
Anyone considering working at Louisa Coffee should think carefully. The promotion system can be described as fast, but it is also terrible.
Labor and health insurance; meals provided
I worked at the Louisa Coffee franchise with the highest sales in Taichung.
The customer volume is really high, so the owner also turns a blind eye to full-time employees’ sour faces
(because one of them is his friend).
They also rush customers out when it is closing time.
I suggested improving the service attitude, but nothing came of it.
There are no physical pay stubs; they only send them to you via LINE to look at.
There is no SOP for training. You have to print the recipes yourself from the notes in the LINE group. Every full-time employee teaches things differently, and everyone has different habits. The drinks are also made according to each person’s habits, but if you don’t make them the way they taught you, you’re considered wrong.
They will even send messages on LINE to publicly shame you and let everyone know.
Yeah, I was really unlucky to encounter bad coworkers.
Free staff meals and drinks
1. The owners of franchised stores all do things however they please, changing recipes randomly and making arbitrary adjustments to SOPs.
2. Franchised stores all say they will legally enroll employees in labor and health insurance and the group insurance plan. I worked at two stores: one enrolled me only after I had worked for 1.5 months, while the second did not insure me at all.
3. Creating employee records is a basic legal requirement for companies. I believe none of them create employee records, right? At least neither of the two franchised stores where I worked did so.
4. When laying off employees, they must notify the labor bureau in advance and issue a certificate of involuntary separation. This was not done either.
5. Not paying wages if an employee works fewer than three days is completely illegal!
6. Every owner who franchises Louisa Coffee thinks the brand spirit is important, and Louisa’s brand spirit is that a group of people completes one order together. You must steam milk and take orders according to Louisa’s procedures; the scripts are rigid and unchanging. When you apply, every owner tells you, “We also look forward to having someone with your extensive experience join us. During your work, you can give us better or more efficient suggestions.” But after you actually join, the reality is completely the opposite. For example, with the sales script, upgrading to a single-origin Americano must be phrased in a specific way; if you say it incorrectly, you will be accused of aggressive selling.
Summary
If you are a newcomer considering joining Louisa Coffee, remember to protect your employment rights. Be sure to clarify employee records, labor and health insurance, and working conditions during the interview. After starting work, remember to check for yourself whether the company has actually insured you. The sugar-level and water-level settings are difficult to memorize. Usually, during the first two weeks after being hired, you will work at the counter, and only afterward will you be moved to the POS and coffee stations behind the counter. Every store has a different training method. I have encountered an owner who simply handed me an SOP manual, told me to read it at home, and taught me nothing. When you do not know something, they say, “How can you not even know this?” If you can accept all of this, congratulations—Louisa Coffee may be a decent place to work.
It’s a company-operated store, and meals and drinks are provided.
As soon as I started, my coworkers were extremely difficult to get along with. There was no training at all, and after completing six months, I wasn’t given the three days of annual leave I was entitled to. The seven days of annual leave per year were also automatically reduced to just four days.
You can drink your favorite beverages and have store meals during work hours.
I previously worked at a franchised store in New Taipei City. There was no labor or health insurance and no labor pension; the owner required us to enroll in an outside workers’ union ourselves.
On weekdays, the working hours were 10.5 hours. There were no staff meals or designated meal breaks, and we often could not eat until after 2 p.m. The pay was about the same as that of a part-time worker.
There was no overtime pay for arriving early or leaving late. Even after working for two full years, the year-end bonus was less than half a month’s salary. When dealing with unreasonable customers, the owner would not support you.
When the new Labor Standards Act regulations took effect, they said they would discuss them with the managers of the other stores. The discussion went on for an entire year, with no news at all.
For deliveries, we had to use our own motorcycles and our own phones to contact customers. There was no reimbursement for fuel or phone expenses. If we did not ride to work because something came up, we would still be yelled at and asked, “How are you supposed to make deliveries like this?”
You can drink any of the beverages in the store.
Whether meals are provided depends on the store manager’s policy. The store where I worked did not provide meals.
The coworkers are around the same age.
You can train to improve your drink-making speed and the legibility of the codes you write. (If your handwriting is too ugly, you’ll get told off.)
There is no labor or health insurance.
There really is no labor or health insurance. I don’t know how it is at other stores, but I didn’t have it.
Not providing meals is really hard on your wallet, especially at the Taipei branch. Food prices around there are ridiculously expensive; once you factor in just eating, gas, and phone costs, half your salary is gone.
There are no dedicated delivery vehicles. Your own scooter is used for deliveries, and there is no gas allowance either.
As for working hours, I don’t know whether every branch is like this, but my shifts were basically nine hours, with no meal break. You had to find a gap yourself, and if you were unlucky and busy the whole time, you could forget about eating.
Another issue is that the scheduled opening time is treated as the start of work. This means the time spent turning on and warming up the equipment is unpaid. Even if you clock in early, you are still paid only from the scheduled time. If you work overtime because things get busy, there is no overtime pay either. Once closing time arrives, you cannot ask customers to leave; you have to wait for them to leave on their own.
You can eat the food and drink the beverages in the store.
Two years ago, I applied for a position at one of the company's stores in Taichung. Despite this being labor-intensive work, it was still subject to an accountability-based work system, with no overtime pay for extra hours worked and no labor or health insurance. There were only six days off per month, and the salary for a full-time position was NT$22,000 (despite having two years of food and beverage work experience). Most outrageous of all, delivery was considered the responsibility of the male colleagues only (isn't gender equality something that is constantly discussed in Taiwanese workplaces?). I felt these were extremely poor working conditions.
Colleagues are around the same age and easy to get along with
The meals are simple to prepare
You may want to think twice about working at a branch opened by a franchisee, as the benefits are often inadequate. Company-operated stores may be worth considering.
I recommend working here only if you have absolutely no coffee-making experience, because the drink volume is high
The interview was on time.
During the interview, they did not seem interested in gaining an in-depth understanding of the candidate, and they did not respond within the agreed-upon timeframe to say whether the candidate had been accepted or not. Instead, they focused solely on discussing the company's brand values and future prospects.
I am a current part-time employee at Louisa, and I have no labor insurance!! No labor insurance!! If part-time workers exceed their scheduled hours, they also don't receive overtime pay! I filed a complaint on the official website!! Louisa ignored me. Helpless... I filed complaints twice, and both sank without a trace. Every word is true, and I have evidence. This is truly a very disappointing company. Behind its glamorous appearance, store management needs significant improvement!!!