One of my favourite jobs I’ve had, I only left cause I was going back to school and I had another job as well that I preferred to stay at cause it was more chill. My manager was the absolute sweetest, but of course that differs from each location.
They were very flexible with time off and working around my other jobs. When I first started I had three jobs, bulk barn, a pizza place, and a smoothie shop, and they were very understanding. I was hired on as a full time supervisor and after about two months I had to go part time because I had to go to school full time which I was not expecting, and they were very understanding and let me pick my shifts cause they wanted me to stay. Basically they were to most accommodating job I have ever had lol. This of course could vary based on location.
As a supervisor I was paid above minimum wage, and the pay was definitely fair. In the morning I would go in, open the store which would consist of counting the tills, cleaning up anything that was left out from the night before, and making a to do list for my shift. I would be by myself for an hour which was fine as it wasn’t super busy. The other employee would come in an hour later, and it was typically only two employees on at a time and it’s not super busy so that’s all that’s really needed tbh. As a supervisor you could pick weather you wanted to be on cash or do stock but I usually let the other employee pick as doing either was fine. Bags can be a bit heavy but I would typically le
Good place to work, lots of cleaning, product knowledge, and tricky cash register
Working at Bulk Barn you learn a lot. Not just job experience but you learn a lot of product knowledge. The majority of the job is cleaning and assisting customers.
Typically during the day you are filling stock, cleaning, assisting customers, making signs, merchandising, and rotating product.
The best part of the job is the relationships you can build with customers based on sharing the same interests in products. I would have customers coming in and showing me pictures of the cakes they made or bringing me a treat in from a recipe they tried out.
The hardest part of the jobs is the explaining of weight and how much customers are getting in comparisons to buying in package. Also not being able to return bulk items due to health and safety regulations.
Management can be good depending on who you work for. Some of the store are corporately owned and some are owned by a franchisee (someone who bought the store and owns it under the Bulk Barn name).
I worked for a franchisee and she was great. She was extremely flexible, offered a nice discount, and took pride of her store and staff.
Working for a corporate store is a lot more of a strict position. They offer no discount to staff and expect fairly open schedules.
Overall, working at Bulk Barn was a great experience for me. Mostly because of my manager and the people I worked with. The job itself can be daunting and the cash register training is hard to grasp due to having to understand weight measurements, product knowle
Prosproduct knowledge, decent hours for part time, discount (if franchisee)
Consno discount (if corporately owned), cleaning constantly can be boring, tricky cash register
4.0
Customer Service Supervisor | Toronto, ON | Aug 27, 2021
Decent Retail Experience starting point
Just going to explain the pros and cons first... In my experience having a flexible schedule is great for working favorable shifts or when plans change. You can easily book it off in advance, talk to the manager or switch shifts with someone with the help of a Supervisor. The downside to this is that someone has their shifts changed and it isn't always communicated to them. So if something comes up and your shift is changed (to an earlier start time or different day in the week) and you are not at work during the change, very little is done to communicate that to you. However, when the time comes to work that shift and you aren't there, you will now be called and told that you are late by the same person who knew about the change.
Ex: I was scheduled to work Monday 1:30PM - 9:30PM which is my typical closing shift and I work it all the time.
Someone had quit on Sunday while I wasn't working so I didn't know about it. That person was supposed to start at 11AM on Monday and work until 7PM. So they gave me that shift, changed the new week schedule on Sunday and then called me at 12:30PM on Monday to tell me I was late for work.
Most Bulk Barns are different depending on the people you work with or have shop there. It can be very repetitive but also rewarding when helping customers find what they need. I think its a great place to start in customer service because if you can handle working there it will be easier everywhere else. State your availability from the beginning.
At least in the locations I worked, management and coworkers were very supportive and friendly. If you stick around, expect possible promotions to keyholder or supervisor after a year or so.
Working for Stock, most days will be the same - refilling bins and answering customer inquiries. Once a week a large shipment comes in with a busy day or two while it's put away.
Working cashier, expect to spend most of the time behind the register or restocking spices and keeping the boxed products neat.
Note that stock work is highly physical - some products, such as the sugars, come in giant fifty-pound bags and may be difficult to pour.
If you have allergies, do not recommend working here. Often when restocking starches, flours, and powdered sugar, the product will form a dust cloud.
You are encouraged to take samples of the products so you know what they taste like and can recommend them.
Unfortunately, recently many locations have become corporate locations. This hasn't affected most policies, but now the stores are open for less hours and you are pushed harder to get cleaning done faster, which may result in not having enough time to finish the work. Used to be, you would close the store at 9, then spend 30 minutes cleaning the floors and 15 minutes finishing up to leave. Then, you started cleaning the floors at 8:30, when customers where still in the store. Now, you start even earlier to be out of the store when it closes at 8.
Time off is given by marking the dates you want o
A typical day at work is maintaining the cash register. At Bulk Barn there are over 4,000 products and you have to memorize codes associated with those products. When a customer arrives at the cash register, you must know the code to the products the client wants to buy. Shelf facing, cleaning bins, under sweeping, pricing and merchandising may all be part of the job on a given day.
Bulk Barn is one of the worst jobs out there. There is a lot of drama that goes on behind the scenes. It is unpleasant to the point where you dread going into work everyday. The higher management are very disorganized. There is hardly any communication save for gossip. Any professional matter is to be swept under the rug and not confronted unless you push it to be seen.
The lessons learned at Bulk Barn is to always watch your back, to speak up and defend yourself when authority is in the wrong. On a side note, there are loads of codes to learn so one does become better at working with numbers.
The hardest and worst part of the job is cleaning. The under sweep of the food bins of the entire store kills your back. Also, the plastic the bins are made up of are sharp. Therefore, when you clean them your hands are subject to many little nicks and cuts. This cleaning processes is done daily.
The most enjoyable part of the jobs is my fellow cashiers and supervisor. They are the only reason why going to work is worth it. They are fun to work with and have become good friends.
ProsNo pros
ConsNo benefits or discounts; long hours; unorganized, poor management; lack of communication; lack of respecting hours; irregular hours
It’s fast, busy and buzzing; a great place to learn several workplace positions like stocking, cash and cleaning processes, as well as inventory and management. For a first job, this position is very well rounded and a good pick. However, many processes rely entirely of the work done by other employees; this job would never be enjoyable with an unproductive staff, as you quite literally always need to be moving to get everything done for the night and week.
It’s a great job overall with the right team, I love my job. However, I wish the company it self was more adamant on communications with staff. There always feels like a huge rift between knowledge in what is being said by corporate, and what staff are aware of as everything is passed through managers and supervisors before reaching everyone else. Also, many requests are often done with no regard of time for staff, like changing cleaning processes that would make it near impossible to finish a night’s cleanings.
But nonetheless, only really think about getting this job if you are ok with fulfilling all roles of the store, and have the physical capabilities to do so. Often during truck heavy bags and boxes are lifted in awkward angles, so this job would be impossible if you could lift a 50-80 pound bag. Also consider time available, as holiday hours are often very lengthy and busy. Cleaning often is the last thing to consider too, as around 50% of every night is cleaning up the store.
2.0
Customer Service Associate / Cashier | St. Catharines, ON | Jan 29, 2020
Awful manager makes for bad employees
I wish the management was better because it would have been a nice job. The manager at the Glendale store was lazy, rude, selfish, made her best friend do all of the work, left early all of the time, tried to take every weekend off all year, payed employees a full day of work for only 3 hours if she really was stuck just so she wouldn't have to be there, fell asleep in the office for hours which is on camera, is always late in the mornings and then complains about her back, wrote swear words all over the boxes in the back like "clean this s**t up" or "I don't want to see this s**t again", poured the sugar packs into the sugar bin, didn't follow health or dress code, mixed expired food with fresh, continues to sell products that are expired, discontinued and garbage logged at a sale price, turned her phone off when she went home so nobody could reach her, and then when she was about to be fired she blamed all of the employees who are very great young people just doing their best and picking up her slack. She wonders why nobody respects her or shows up for shifts. Plus there were only like 10 employees at my store in total, she really burned all of her bridges. I wasn't even there very long (half a year) and I experienced all of this, I cant imagine what else she does.
Bulk Barn is a great place to learn how to work in a medium/slow-paced environment, with lots of opportunities to learn about the products and help customers with your knowledge. Would also be good for anyone passionate about baking or cooking, as I learned a lot about them during my time!
Low stress! The only thing I have encountered that is particularly stressful are the customers, but that's not the company's fault!
Although, in my specific experience, I have worked at 4 in my city in the past 5 years and have never advanced past cashier (even though I have been trained in multiple areas, still only make cashier's wage). Even after being promised to be trained as a supervisor more times than I can remember.
Also, the customer base mostly consists of senior citizens or young adults/kids who snack on the food very often, so it can get very frustrating to constantly have to tell people they must ask to sample food, and miscommunications between senior customers can lead to frustrations from the customers.
ProsLots of product knowledge to learn about, low stress, slow-paced, easy to use online scheduling system
ConsCustomers are often rude, customers expect you to be knowledgeable in the products, bad hours, bad management
High paced environment with a great and hard working staff.
My responsibilities include: Maintaining the cleanliness of the store front, cash desks, bins and aisles, totes and wet pails. I also work cash, serving customers when needed. At the end of my shift I begin preparing for closing which includes; wiping and dusting the individuals bins, under sweeping bellow the bins, facing up products and moping the store floors.
I have learned great deal from working at Bulk Barn. My abilities to work confidently with a friendly staff and ensure that customers are being assisted with at all times has greatly improved. I was young when I began the job in 2007, and I feel as if my ability to work with others as a team and independently has improved my leadership skills. I have also learned the importance of inventory control, and supporting the needs of customers.
The co-workers at this job are what has kept me coming back every year. Not only is the store owner approachable, friendly and confident in his staff's abilities, this also shows within the management and staff working at this location. Our nature is to put the customer first and treat them with full respect and also to work together as a team in making this a happy workplace.
My first manager at Bulk Barn was amazing! Everybody loved coming to work, it wasn't too hard, even when it was busy. Having at least 4 or 5 people in the store at all times made things easy as one would be on cash, and the rest of us would be stocking/cleaning/facing/whatever else, and if the cashier needed back up there were still plenty of people to be doing the other tasks.
However, we got a new manager who made working there awful. Schedules were horrible, there was a disregard for people's ability to work certain days (often people would be scheduled on their days off/days they CAN'T make it, then would be berated for not being able to work those days) and the store was generally in a constant state of disarray because there weren't enough people working. Several people quit more than one time.
If you plan on applying there let it be known the work itself isn't too hard if you're able to withstand standing for hours and cleaning/stocking/cash, but make sure to ask the employees what the management situation is like. You'll be doing too much work for minimum wage if the management sets it up that way.
Prosemployee discount, not entirely difficult
Conssome cleaning activities are very arduous, management makes or breaks it
Questions and answers about Bulk Barn
How often do you get a raise at Bulk Barn?
Asked Nov 7, 2022
I've gotten 1 in 2 years
Answered Sep 26, 2023
Aucune
Answered Sep 18, 2023
What is the promotion process like at Bulk Barn?
Asked Nov 11, 2022
non existent
Answered Sep 9, 2023
have to be willing to work more than your paid for and strain you back in the process
Answered Sep 4, 2023
How is feedback from management delivered at Bulk Barn?
Asked Jun 8, 2019
not the best honestly, can be messy sometimes
Answered Sep 13, 2023
rarely
Answered Sep 4, 2023
What benefits does Bulk Barn offer?
Asked May 7, 2019
No benefits
Answered Aug 29, 2023
un 15 % de rabais sur tout en magasin a part les produit déjà en rabais
Answered Jul 27, 2023
What is Bulk Barn holiday leave policy? How much holiday leave do you get per year?
