Married + Post Holidays
January! An extension of the holidays!
I want to talk about how we planned for the holidays, how they went, and how we’re still reeling. I’m listening to Gabor Szabo, some 70’s acoustic goodness. Drinking some old old old drip coffee! As per usual. Slept the hardest I’ve slept in months, time to write.
Drowning in fun events was how I would describe what we committed to! This is the really great thing about group meetings. We got together and said okay we want to do all these events, it’s going to be a lot let’s just try and have fun and keep our heads down. In November we opened with our third annual over the garden wall series movie night, I dressed up and we packed the house! We did it as a hot chocolate pop up first and foremost, which was maybe the best way we’ve handled movie nights so far. Then We got going on hand turkeys, free to draw when you come in, we put up about a hundred and voted a winner up. Then we had a latte art comp in alachua, and the first coffee fest in Orlando! We were the only shop from our city but it felt like the whole state was represented. Just getting everyone out there and setting up was one of the biggest things we’d ever put together. Turkey day was huge, my motto is take every holiday seriously no matter how small.
In December we had a big holiday market. Instead of our usual last Saturday of the month we combined Nov/Dec in mid December with one big market, and that was the correct move. it helped keep the actual holiday weekends organized. Then we had our third annnual cookie bake off, and as always the turn out was a little better than the time before. I’m always amazed by these things.
In January despite things feeling equally as busy, we left for the week to go visit west Florida and get married for a few days. We got to see the manatees and eat fresh oranges. See all our friends and hang out as adults which is kind of hard to do now. We came back home, the staff and cafe community threw us an amazing party with special drinks and cake and food and music and photography. Who knew that opening a community spot would repay us so meaningfully. It’s really profound. I don’t think most business owners even consider this going in, you touch a lot of peoples lives! I think about it every week I’m here. Anyways!
Menu feedback and bar-flow was something I was pretty proud of this year. We had a sparkling americano that actually did well with the hibiscus lemongrass petal pop. A great gateway sparkling americano that tastes like strawberry lemonade. We brought our pine white mint mocha back as always with the green latte art, and found mint/pine that carried flavor well without an overnight tea steep. The fresh pine while we had it was killer. The toffee butter latte just steals the show though, mainly. This year by making all three bases as syrups or sauces, it kept our bar flow smooth! Which is exactly what we needed for the holidays. We’re up to almost 900 toffee butter lattes since December, and more than half of those were probably in a 2 week period before and after XMAS. So nothing with super complex prep or bar flow disruption was crucial! It can be temping to go really wild with our biggest season.
Keeping up with double the volume in general was interesting. When I look at our charts and see we straight up doubled last year which felt totally unsustainable, I don’t even know how to process that mentally haha. With our team who has all been in coffee for over a year or with us at least that long, I get the impression we’re all sort of reaching that skill ceiling with the tools in front of us, which is why we’re able to keep up, and it’s up to me to start creating systems to raise that floor and that ceiling. We’re all smarter on bar and working together as a strong team. Meaning now I need to make what we do easier, and create new ways to do things so that the future team has an easier time! I have some tools in the mail, but I also need more storage shelves! We started a towel service and re-arranged our storage layout, maybe next we need a milk guy! We added a shelf for syrups so we can use them in a row two deep instead of wrapping them around the prep bar. Little stuff! I feel grateful that I can work on bar with the team and work on these improvements together. There’s a seemingly never ending pile of admin and construction tasks, but with the volume i also feel a little more financially capable of taking care of these and I’m just trying to enjoy the process.
Also I don’t really know where to put this but we paid off our espresso machine! YEA!!!!! But then a week later our HVAC unit died of old age and I had to buy a new one which I am now making the same monthly payment on.. ahh. progress..
Battling the mail and merch delays has been my biggest enemy this season. When we experience multitudes of growth week to week, by the time something I need arrives I may need more of it, then the next week I need more than that! Maybe it’s specialty like matcha or maybe it’s something easy like napkins, but it feels like just about everything we use is being used in greater quantities. Little things I used to buy once every 6 months, are now suddenly bi-weekly. Then I have to look at that par and decide if it needs to go up or if it’s a fluke. If it’s super expensive or takes up a lot of space I need to try and account for that when ordering too. It’s been interesting for sure.
The future feels good though and not just because we’re seeing more people in the door. We got married mid - January and I feel like my other major life goal besides being a business owner has been accomplished. On the one hand I’m now considering time at home and with my husband as a matter of important time blocking and that’s a whole new angle, on the other hand, that’s time I just didn’t have before. I’m grateful to have a shop and team that supports that part of my life, and I feel capable of getting through whatever the future holds with that security in the background. Love you guys, - Elias
