About 100 Small Business Owners Revive Their Businesses with Starbucks-Style Know-How

'Restart Program' First Achievement
28 Middle-aged Rebooting Small Business Owners Start Their Second Life as Starbucks Baristas

On the 30th, Park Young-sun, Minister of SMEs and Startups, is presenting the job transition incentive at the Starbucks Restart Program completion ceremony.

#Mr. Oh, a man in his 40s who used to run a small business, recently got a job as a Starbucks barista and received his first paycheck last month. This was made possible through the 'Restart Program,' which supports middle-aged small business owners in starting or restarting cafes. He feels a sense of fulfillment providing customers with reliable service as a middle-aged barista. He has also set a new goal to become a store manager within five years and operate the store until retirement.

#Mr. Jo, in his 50s, who ran a travel business for over 20 years before closing it down, is preparing to reopen a 'World Coffee Travel Cafe' by combining the management know-how he learned through the Restart Program with his own experience. He is determined to challenge himself once again with his own brand.

The Ministry of SMEs and Startups (Minister Park Young-sun, hereafter the Ministry) and Starbucks Coffee Korea (CEO Song Ho-seop, hereafter Starbucks) have begun to see results from the pilot operation of the 'Restart Program.' On the 30th, the Ministry announced that it held a completion and hiring ceremony for small business owners aged 40 and above who completed the Restart Program and were employed as baristas at a Starbucks location in Jung-gu.

Established and operated this year, the Restart Program consists of 16 hours of theoretical and practical training covering coffee trends, customer service, beverage quality, hygiene management, and store profit and loss management. The program minimized the number of trainees and complied with daily quarantine guidelines, running twice in the second half of this year, in August and October. As a result, out of 27 graduates from the first training session, 10 have already been hired as baristas at Starbucks and are currently working. Among the 72 trainees from the second session, 18 who passed the hiring process will sequentially start working at stores in the metropolitan area.

The Ministry stated that it will provide up to 1 million KRW to 28 baristas who meet the eligibility criteria for the job encouragement allowance and will continue to support the 71 other program graduates in their efforts to restart businesses. Based on the results of this year's pilot operation, the Ministry and Starbucks plan to review improvements and discuss systematic expansion plans to extend the 2021 Restart Program beyond the metropolitan area. In the future, the program is expected to expand around Starbucks training centers in places like Busan.

Minister Park Young-sun of the Ministry emphasized, "It is now time for policy operations through private cooperation rather than government-led initiatives. We hope that the specialized strengths and ideas of large and medium-sized enterprises will strengthen the self-sustainability of small business owners." She added, "The government will actively work to ensure that various programs supporting the revival of small business owners, like Starbucks' case, can be established."