Moving! Hiring! Tiring!
Afternoon! I’m here at work Listening to the 1996 Fishmans album “Kuuchu Camp.” I just ate a pistachio muffin, drinking some water : ) I MOVED! FINALLY! Just gotta unpack. I HIRED SOMEONE! Last night finally. Which is a whole thing. I”M TIRED! But i’m about to be better hopefully haha, we’ll see! It’s easy to get down about it all, so I wanted to write something as soon as I got through it.
I moved across the street from the cafe
Which saves me 6-10 hours of driving a week! It gives me 6-10 hours of free time! It gives me 6-10 hours of extra sleep! It gives me room to breathe.
I’m already working 80 hours a week, so adding that commute is brutal. Every time I needed something from home it was an hour drive. Every time I made my partner bring me something from home it was an hour drive. Every time I needed to go in on my day off it was at least an extra hour! And we did it, and neither of us complained because we liked our house, but when my employee left and the cafe got busier we started talking about breaking lease. We were driving all the time!
So we broke lease, we no longer have a house.
And honestly we couldn’t keep up with it! Mowing the lawn and keeping it clean was half the time we spent at home on a good week!
We rented the house for the space, we were both working from home and we knew we could fill the garage with cafe equipment. We used every inch of that house! Right before the cafe opened, the garage and the living room were full of boxed floor to ceiling! We painted in the driveway, we took photos on the lawn, we even kept an outside cat who stayed in an upside down plastic storage bin I jigsawed together with cafe tools.
But now it was too much, so we moved in to a one bedroom apartment with a porch, and rented a storage unit downstairs for cafe equipment. Which not only gets the stuff out of our house, but makes it accessible for employees down the road, and a much shorter drive in an emergency.
This took about two weeks, and the whole time I was hiring.
With our handful of free hours a week we were packing, cleaning, donating, selling and getting buried in admin work. On top of the usual stuff I was inviting dozens of application emails from our website and from indeed. Pretty soon I was something like 200 emails behind.
For the few folks I did find time to interview, they would often show up early and prevent me from pre-closing. I was happy to talk to them, but I was also being stretched paper thin as I dumped hours in to making connections that could potentially be vital to long term relationships, or potentially be a waste of time.
So I was getting 5-7 hours of sleep a night, and steadier on bar than ever. Weekdays were tough, but weekends were really tough. I was having a hard time asking my partner for help who was basically in the same position, but to their massive credit they were still bringing me lunch and helping out during events. I had a wisdom tooth crack and suddenly I needed to get all 4 removed but couldn’t afford it. One of my regulars is a dentist, and he was able to grind it down a bit which made it non-crucial. For $50. Bless him.
Through it all I was still talking to people like I cared and we were still getting positive reviews. We hit 100 5 star google reviews, and I was invited to be on Win Dixie receipts by their sales rep. I was trusted to serve Onyx coffee on bar later this month, and I continue to hear “this is our first time, but we’ll definitely be back.” I was staying positive.
Our external motto is “Get up and hit it!” Our internal motto is “Give people energy!”
Which when your’e super drained is pretty hard haha. Despite it all, these two weeks we continued to do that internally with events, new merch, and new food/drinks. We did that externally by donating to events such as Umami Curry’s 2 year party down the road, and buying coffee at Setlan Coffee’s opening, and Jacksonville Coffee Co’s opening. We did this all despite being low on funds because it’s as crucial as paying the bills.
It’s crucial to get up and hit it, every day, like we mean it.
So that’s what I did, I drank good coffee listened to good music and had fun. I worried about admin work on Monday, and worried about being a good host the rest of the week. I hired someone yesterday and now I can get to training, we’ll be back on track soon. Thanks for reading! - Elias
