Is your gift shop run by volunteers or outsourced?  If you are outsourced, who runs the shop?

My gift shop used to run by volunteers but now it is outsourced with Lori's Gift Shops.  Brief history is as follows:

We had a paid gift shop manager who ran the shop for about 12 years and did a wonderful job.  Shop always made good money.  Volunteers staffed the shop during the day and paid folks at night.  Manager decided to retire and the replacement we hired did a terrible job and ran the shop into the ground.  Shop lost huge amounts of money.  We ended up firing her and hiring a temporary replacement. 

In the meantime we received a letter from our lawyers stating we had a problem with the Fair Labor Standards Act in the way we were running our gift shop and we had to either be all paid or all volunteer.  We asked our volunteers about taking it over and running and they did not feel comfortable doing so.

At this point, in the face of having to fully staff and get back to profitable, we decided to look at outsourcing.  We did some research, visited some shops, and decided it was the best option for us.

We have been very pleased with Lori's!!  And the volunteer office makes a good little chunk of money each year for hospital projects. :)

Jamine,

At this time we are not… I do not like the thought of outsource. If you have or hire a GS manager that knows what he/she doing there is no need in outsourcing. The days of an all volunteers staff is outdated, I’m not saying not to have volunteers in the shops you need them. You must treat the GS like a department of the hospital. We have 4 paid staff (2FT and 2PT) and 8 volunteers that help us.  

We have a paid manager and the shop is staffed entirely by volunteers.  The manager is outstanding!  She has volunteer display chairmen who rotate stock weekly, including the jewelry in cases.  She has volunteer card chairs (take care of card inventory and ordering), jewelry chairs, plush chairs, candy and sundry chairs, stockroom chairs, etc.  Without the volunteer leadership talking responsibility for many different parts, the job would be too much for one paid person. 

A few years ago we researched outsourcing, but with what the shop currently makes, it was not to our benefit to do so.

 

We have 2 shops runs by a paid Mananger (with tons of retail experience) and a n assistant Manager.They are staffed totally by volunteers, we make a profit and receive tons of compliments from ouour staff. I am not a fan of outsourcing at all, know some that did it and eventually took it back. If yoyou get a good retail person in there to manage it, it will work and you an cater to your employees. ThThe volunteers do differrent things than the paid managers.