Pros
They're flexible with schedules, if you have a great SM you'll have a great experience, you get 50% off the base price as an employee discount, you get to see new and exciting products, they are obsessed with product knowledge! You learn so much! They do contests for free prizes, employee dollars and items all the time. I adore the SM, he works really hard, and tries every method for you to be successful but doesn't shove rhetoric down your throat and is realistic, but still holds you accountable. The benefits are wide-ranging (health, life, 401k match, etc.) and they're very reasonably priced! Truthfully it's a small sales team, and if you get along and work hard, it's an amazing dynamic. You become a small family that fights for one another to be successful. A great team dynamic makes for an excellent experience. I got lucky, because my team is amazing. You meet amazing customers, they are as passionate as the company about this product. The majority of repeat customers are friendly, easy to talk to, and fun. You get to talk about food and cooking, and recipes all the time. You learn as much from other customers as you do the company. You get to do things like food demos, cooking classes, and blogger event things and it's a lot of fun. This job is actually a lot of fun. When the company gets shipments, they pay the shipping company to delivery it inside your store, so you only have to put it away, which is very convenient and nice. Pay is fair in comparison to the retail environment. If your store as a total is successful you get a bonus (like 1.5% of your total sales, so maybe a $100-200). They are a private owned business.
Cons
They expect you to act like a salesperson without any bonuses or commission (unless you hit metal status as a store, which is incredibly rare in a downturn economy or economic shift and then its demoralizing), you have a bad SM then your life will suck. DM & RM drink so much "company koolaid" at times its nauseating, everything is a "rah-rah" and all the conversations are this "it only takes one customer to change a month around," when your month is 10k down from goal. They often speak about employees as replaceable, without ever understanding that losing or changing an employee can COMPLETELY shift the dynamic of a small store staff. They have no loyalty to the store staff, and set unrealistic goals or expectations. They following a strategy as a company called Friedman Training, that they pay a ton for. It's a sales strategy and the creator is very narcissistic if you ever ready his books. While there are "valid points" that are beneficial, you're not reinventing the wheel. However, the Friedman Group does a ton of monotonous reports that are repetitive. You report on a DPS report, then the same numbers go on a store IPS report, and then the individual's IPS, and then a WPS report, and then you have a daily numbers report, which is copied to a written daily agenda report, and then you have a traffic counter (2 now) and you have to report that on the daily numbers report, and then on the register, and then on a corporate report on sharepoint...it's a waste of time. Sales people are supposed to be selling. They can't be selling if they're writing the same numbers over and over, and transferring the same numbers from one report to another. They don't care if people work there 1 year or 10, they have no problem getting rid of an employee. They prefer getting rid of older employees to have a "fresh face". They cater more to the top 10% income bracket in an area, which it's only about 20% of their business, and ignore the other 80%. They focus too much on the 50+ age customer crowd, instead of trying to build up the 30 yr old young couples and graduates. You have no advertising budget. Dress code is black on black with black shoes, no tattoos visible, no flamboyant makeup or jewelry, or colors of any kind, hair must be natural. The store is brightly colored...but their associates certainly can't be.