80hr work weeks. Now 50.
Happy Thursday everyone, this is a post wisdom teeth removal Eli owner guy coming at ya’ with a blog about not working as much. I’m drinking water and listening to some electronic ambient from Domenique Dumont. Beginning this month I hired about 30 hours of time away from myself, or that’s what I’m shooting for anyways. I want to talk about where I was at and where I’m going as an owner since I know a lot of other owners or potential future owners read these, and people in the service industry who constantly over work themselves.
I think this is important to talk about because when you tell someone as a barista you’re tired, of course you’re going to hear “well you’re in the right place” or something like that. As an owner if you say you’re always working you might hear “well that’s what you’re supposed to do.” Over the short term sure, you can drink coffee and fill in gaps, but it’s not sustainable forever. I can safely say I’m familiar with my limits now, and I’ve spent some time dancing that line. Let’s get in to it.
What my week looked like before this
On average I’d get up at 5:30am and head in to work until 5:30pm 4 days a week, then I’d work until 7pm two days a week for things like the grease trap, shopping, or catching up on other cleaning tasks. On Mondays my “off day” I’d work 3-5 hours on paperwork, admin stuff like paying bills or planning, laundry and even merch design. Sometimes I’d work more or less but usually that’d be about right.
So that’s 80 hours, about an hour a day was eating and using the restroom. I’m thankful for my fiancé who had been helping out with meal prep more recently and encouraging me to eat and sit down more. Believe it or not for the first month or two I also had a night time job but I realized pretty quickly that wasn’t going to work haha.
This ebbed and flowed a bit as we got busier. Early on it was really easy to close up and clean because we were slow, but I also lived 45 minutes away from the shop, so 9-10 hours a week were just spent driving. I didn’t have a good sense of inventory control or any systems so I could also end up shopping 3 times a week. Another 3-5 hours. Thinking in general about inefficiencies I probably hit that 80 hour number with 60 hours on bar, and 20 hours of nonsense like triple shopping haha.
So I got better at systems and got this number down to 70, on bar all day plus some admin work and shopping. I then started hiring with the hours I could afford just to assist during peak hours. I wanted any payroll hours I had to benefit the guest experience; At first that was weekend help then it became every morning. Systems behind the bar were good enough that I could still get out of there on time, but until I was eating regularly I was pretty drained regardless. My peers told me to hire out my time first, but I liked being on bar and really felt like we needed two people on bar to grow and give guests confidence in the morning heading to work that we could get drinks out quickly.
Around our two year mark this spring it got busier and steadier all day, I was tired and back up to 80 hours staying late. I next tried to hire out a little of my time, to prevent me from shopping during rush hour after close and break up my sleep schedule. On Tuesdays our first day open during the week, I left early to shop around noon. On Fridays I came in late, which let me sleep but also gave my body some rest during our busy weekend mornings Fri/Sat/Sun.
Now we’re in Fall (Pumpkin Spice Season)
For the last two years we saw an increase of 30% in sales from summer to fall. Pumpkin Spice lattes, people working at cafes, retail sales, It would coast up through the holidays then slow down in January. That’s also always been my experience in coffee or food, as a food franchisee once told me “the J’s slow us down, June July and January.” This last Winter wasn’t so bad for us, it only dropped maybe 10% in January then hovered around there until picking up a bit in June - August. It was weird and I can try to attribute it to a few things, that it would slow back down, but I decided to have some confidence and plan for an increase in sales of 20% this fall anyways.
Assuming that increase I wanted to allocate as much to payroll I could. If we were going to get that much busier and I was already at my limit, I needed to spend more time on the business from the outside in. I also needed some more rest. So I gave myself Thursday / Friday off, and half days on Tues / Wed. Working all day just on Weekends. TIME OFF! WOW! 2 and a half years later. Let’s break that down.
On Tuesday morning I’m still opening, then going shopping for myself and the shop for the rest of the week around noon. That’s 10 hours. On Wednesday I’m going in at 11am-4pm for 6 more hours. On Thursday and Friday I’ll spend maybe 10 hours total on admin work or miscellaneous projects. Maybe I’ll take one day off and work the other. Then Saturday and Sunday I’m in up at 5am done at 5pm. for 24 hours total. Now I’m at 50 hours total.
So that’s the plan
I’ve used these first few weeks to travel for fun, work and then wedding planning with my fiancé. This October I got back to back surgeries on my legs and teeth that have been put off for the last year. Now I’m ready to hopefully start actually resting and working on the shop haha.
While I feel pretty confident in our basic systems, there are things like adding shelves, cleaning the AC unit, scrubbing the floors. There’s stuff that takes hours after hours I just didn’t have time for before, but things that needed to get done. Sometimes you make a promise like getting shirts made for an event, and then you’re working until 10pm at night or later because that’s the only time to do it! Making amazing stuff is often on top of those 80 hour work weeks. As a creative person they’re just as fun and important, but they’re exhausting!
As I begin to not work myself to death there’s definitely a lot of guilt associated with that, I won’t know every person that comes through the cafe anymore. I won’t be personally responsible for every major or minor decision. I won’t be able to serve every espresso having tasted the dial in. That’s okay though. Trust in your people and shop are what it’s all about. A busy shop is more than one person can handle and it’s more valuable as a team effort made of a fabric of people. Now I can finally sit down at home, and know what my cats do mid-day on a Wednesday, that’s pretty cool too. - Eli
