Working outside makes it better inside

The other day, I was preparing lunch for Matheo.  This involves unearthing a ziplock from the freezer, retrieving a few cubes of various foods his mother has prepped, cooked and frozen using an ice cube tray.  There's tuna which are brown cubes, green pea cubes and then two very similar purple/blue cubes: beets and the other blueberries & yogurt.

You can probably guess where this story is going.

Yep, my failure to check the label meant my boy happily gulped down a wonderful mixture of tuna, pea & blueberry yogurt.  His twisting lips and confused frown should have told me of the sharp & sweet flavours of the blueberry yogurt fighting with the meaty flavour of the tuna.

But I just keep doing aeroplanes and choo-choo trains with spoonfuls of this bizarre mixture.  Poor boy.

I honestly never saw myself being a stay-at-home dad.  Having lunch with Matheo is now a regular event for the two of us and my son probably now assumes it is quite normal to see more of his father than his mother.  

It's obviously not a clear-cut situation: Julie will often come back from a long shift and then have to play mum while I rush around trying to catch up on bookkeeping/ admin/ catch up on emails or repair something at the cafe.

It's why I am writing this at 2:15am.

But it works.  My work is not time-sensitive, nor does it directly affect customers.  If Julie isn't at the cafe to ensure quality control, fire fight staff situations or manage wastage issues, then we're in trouble.  It's almost like Julie has to manage the short-term while I manage the long-term.

In the future, however, I would like to employ someone who can run the day-to-day tasks at the cafe and have Julie help me develop the business (and not manage it).  Simply because the more policies and procedures we can instill in the cafe, the less money is wasted: the business becomes better maintained and better maanged and more efficient.  The more we can fine-tune how to make the cafe be profitable or understanding the most profitable elements of the menu, the better business owners we will become.

Only when you stand back from your business can you truly be effective.  Elbow-deep in dishes is  not an effective place to be.  BUT, you need to have washed every dish at least once so you know how to write the policies.  If you don't know your own business then you will fail.

And, with two and a half exhausting years under our belts, we know every element of Cafe Haven.

I hope!