Would your employees cringe if you told them a coffee shop team building exercise was in their future?

Remember that game, “Pass the Orange”? The embarrassing one where you use your neck and chin to pass an orange to a friend, relay-race style? Employees can feel like 11-year-olds at summer camp when coerced into shenanigans like this. A recent Wakefield Research study found that almost a third of U.S. office workers dislike team building activities. That likely goes for hourly restaurant and café workers, too.

We recently brought you a few handy hiring tips, and ideas for reducing staff turnover. Then just the other day, we stumbled upon a few more ideas for building your staff that we think are worth adding to the pile. After all, hiring prowess cannot be understated in its value to your restaurant or café. It is nothing if not a fine art, and doing it right will save you loads of time, money and headaches:

There's no question that laptop users are increasingly soaking up wireless connections and electrical outlets at coffee shops around the world, along with their lattes. Their presence creates a challenge for owners who want to have a wi-fi policy that maintains a welcoming atmosphere but also want to encourage the necessary customer turnover for a profitable business.

In today’s corporate environment, career-minded go getters are chasing productivity and creativity as much as they seek healthy salaries and competitive benefits. The hardest of these to maintain are creativity and productivity, and the surprising solution can be spending time away from coworkers at relatively noisy public places.

Want to know one of the biggest hidden challenges in running any coffee shop or restaurant? Keeping training costs down. Every day spent training means lost productivity or additional labor costs in the form of the trainer him/herself.

Your café is different from all the rest. You just have to determine your coffee niche, and promote it.

With an estimated 74% annual turnover rate in the foodservice industry, it can sometimes feel like you're constantly hiring and training new employees. But you can reduce staff turnover with a few proactive measures: