It’s the busiest time of the retail year, and companies are hiring aplenty. Amazon wants to fill 150,000 seasonal jobs this year; Target is targeting 100,000; even 1-800-Flowers has 10,000+ open roles. In all, the National Retail Federation predicts retailers will bring on between 500,000 and 665,000 workers this holiday season, up from 486,000 in 2020.

But once those jobs are filled, there comes the next challenge: Training. In today’s world of heightened competition—and shopper expectations—the customer experience is key.

The stakes are high if a company doesn’t deliver.

• More than half (53%) of US shoppers said they cut their spending after just one bad experience with a company, according to a Qualtrics XM Institute study.

“The customer experience at the end of the day is usually the one most remembered,” said Ross Forman, managing director of the workplace operations and strategy group at accounting firm BDO USA. “Meaning: Can I even get an employee to help me? Can I get a knowledgeable employee to help me? Are they responsive when I do?”

Best foot forward

Foot Locker knows that shoppers are racing around during the holidays.

“Customers want quality service, but speed and being able to get in and out efficiently are some attributes that are absolutely paramount during those peak seasons,” George Jenkins, the company’s VP of customer experience in North America, told Retail Brew.

To that end, Foot Locker tells its workers to keep an eye out for “doubling up.”

“Obviously, if it’s a slower pace, then you have time for one-on-one interaction with consumers,” Jenkins said. But when traffic picks up “and the ratio of customers to associates is 10 to one or eight to one, then we talk about...being able to assist a team member” and handing them off.

• The company tailors its training platform (fittingly called Lace Up) for the time of year.

Team players: When it comes to new workers, Foot Locker looks to them more to fill gaps where needed—whether it’s stocking or fulfilling online orders—instead of overloading them with too much responsibility off the bat. “It’s more of a support role,” he explained.

“So, it might be someone that’s acknowledging customers and saying, ‘Hey, do you need help?’ And grabbing the radio to say, ‘Hey, I need this and this size,’ or going to an associate with [a] handheld device.”

• And yes, Foot Locker equips its employees with handhelds so they can quickly scan and see if a product is in stock, Jenkins noted—a better alternative to trekking to the back room only to come back and say you don’t have the sneaks.

Click here to read more about the workers that come back to Foot Locker—plus, how PetSmart folds the customer experience into its interviews.—KM

Sweetgreen saw some sweet success when it debuted on the New York Stock Exchange yesterday. Its shares opened at $52 (or about 3.5 of its salads), a big bump from the $28 Sweetgreen priced at on Wednesday. That too was up from the expected $23–$25 range.

• The salad chain’s stock closed the day at $49.50, soaring 77%.

Retail Brew chatted with cofounder and CEO Jonathan Neman on the company’s big day. Here’s what he said is next for Sweetgreen.

Spacing out: Sweetgreen wants to double its 140-store footprint in the next three to five years. But what those stores will look like depends on the market. “It’s not a one-size-fits-all approach. It’s more about understanding the demand trends and that neighborhood, and building for those communities,” Neman told us.

“You’ll see us open stores with seating and indoor dining. You’ll see us open stores that are just pickup, and I think there’ll be everything in-between,” he said. “It’s really taking the brand and the promise and expressing that through many different formats.”

Grow, baby, grow: Neman has his eyes on tech too—specifically automation. (Sweetgreen snapped up Spyce, a kitchen-robotics startup, in August.)

“I’m really excited about the future of automation within the restaurant space and what it can do to improve the customer experience, from an accuracy and speed-of-service perspective, as well as the team-member experience—making it a better, easier place to work,” he said.—KM

’Tis the season to...announce a marketplace? Macy’s thinks so, dropping the news on all of us yesterday.

The platform, which is expected to go live in the latter half of 2022, is part of Macy’s plan to expand its current selection of brands and new categories.

• It’ll be powered by Mirakl, a marketplace-tech company.

“We can grow digital efficiencies faster, we can generate more profitability, we can get more depth and breadth of assortment, and really, you know, address new brands and emerging trends for a customer who looks to us to be able to do that,” Macy’s CEO Jeff Gennette said during the company’s conference call.

• Macy’s digital business is expected to generate $10 billion in sales by 2023, and the new marketplace would likely add “incremental revenue” on top of that, Matt Baer, the company’s chief digital and customer officer, noted in a statement.

Yay or nay? Whether it’s the right move is TBD. Michael Olaye, VP and managing director of experience community at innovation consultancy R/GA, told Retail Brew he thinks it’s a smart call.

• “Consumers today have so much choice when it comes to shopping online that being a brand that enables access to the best of products through a carefully vetted roster of partners could help Macy’s reputation as well as its revenues,” he said.

But GlobalData Retail’s Neil Saunders sees it potentially as an example of “misplaced thinking.” In an emailed statement, he wrote, “While there is nothing inherently wrong with the idea, it is hardly pioneering since every retailer is now adding marketplaces.”—JS

Today’s top retail reads.

Not so fast: How a shipment of whisky from a distillery in Scotland all the way to a liquor store in Baltimore illustrates today’s supply-chain woes. (The Wall Street Journal)

Spotlight on: The jewelry industry has a diversity problem, but solutions are slow-going. (The Business of Fashion)

Reinventing the wheel: Why one founder is tackling refined carbs with a bagel. (ThingTesting)

Beep boop: Did you know that in the space of just 100 years, humanity has gone from coining the term “robot” to Boston Dynamics producing those uncanny-valley dancing robots?

Whether you answered “1” or “0” to that question, we think we’ve got your gears turning.

Want more? Our friends at Emerging Tech Brew have put together a guide on all things robotics, breaking down its history, the industries that rely on automatons, and what’s next in the robosphere. Click here to give it a read.

Catch up on the Retail Brew stories you may have missed.

• “It was kind of an accident”: How kids’ overalls company Hey Gang expanded to adults
• Ulta Beauty’s Karla Davis on the evolution of the customer experience
• What goes into making a sustainable garment? A new transparency tool lets shoppers in on the process

Three of the stories below are real...and one is most definitely not. Can you spot the fake?

1. Cheese prices have been falling because of a cyber attack.
2. The bear costume featured in Kanye West’s The College Dropout album is on sale for $1 million.
3. Versace and Lego Group are teaming up on an exclusive fashion collection.
4. Reese’s nine-inch, limited-edition Thanksgiving Day pies are already sold out.

Keep reading for the answer.