hours

dull to talk about it, but life in a cafe is gruelling. i never realised it of course, but working the business for five months has allowed me to reflect on the sheer daily workload. it is a love-hate relatioship but i thought you might be interested in understanding our typical day:

6am(ish) - open up. get airpots warmed, season espresso machine, bake muffins/ loaves and a baguette, make soup, cut new cakes and a million small jobs. thankfully we have a great employee who helps open up in the morning and takes the pressue off julie and i having to be at the cafe every morning .

7am - open signs on and finish off the long list of opening dutiese.

8am to 11am - usually nothing for the first hour. around 8.30am the usual crowd of friendly faces wander in for their cup of joe. by 9.30am it starts to get busy as our morning crowd find their hunger and need someone to cook up their breakfast.

12pm to 3pm - it varies but our lunch crowd begins to show up and flows into a coffee & cake crowd by mid-afternoon. its busy and plates begin to pile up quickly.

4pm to 6pm - our typical slow period and we often use this time to prep foods for the next day.

7pm to 9pm (close) - begin to clean up the cafe. every surface needs to be bleached. the floors wiped, polished or mopped. lots and lots of closing duties, in fact we have a two-page check list that has to be followed. this whole process takes at least 90 minutes and when you get to leave depends on how busy the cafe is at night.

i read recently that to succeed in the hospitality industry you need to work on the business, not in it. julie and i do everything in our power to constantly analyse our situation in order to come up with ways we can improve the business. Improve it for customers, for the staff and for ourselves. that is hard sometimes when you are constantly involved in doing the dishes, bussing tables or making 20 lattes. but you also need to be in the thick of it to know what things need changing first. our lives are mad busy but things are getting changed and getting easier. i can't wait to see how different things will be a year from now.