Pumpkin Spice Season, Architect Workflow.
It's Saturday and I'm having my second pumpkin drink of the season at Brass Tacks Coffee. I can't believe we're entering fall! We don't get much of a weather change here in FL, but I'll be heading north at the end of next month and I'm looking forward to hot drinks in cold weather. Hot ciders and chocolates growing up in Minnesota were some of my first coffee shop memories.
We live in a Post-Third-Wave world, and people are ready to start making fun of cafe's doing pumpkin or apple drinks in autumn. Personally I see them as tradition and love them, I always look forward to silly Halloween drinks in October too; Drinks named after candy bars and pumped full of chocolate. I'm 100% going to have those drinks when the time comes, and I'm 100% going to give candy to anyone in costume Halloween week/end.
As for the shop, we're tasting Tea and waiting on the Architect.
I'm a huge fan of tea, at my first serious café job we had a wall of 30 teas at any given time. The owner liked the weird stuff like Yerba Mate, Rooibos, smoked and dried ginger tea; She made me like it too. A few years later I helped a kombucha company with tasting and ordering teas, we would also grow and dry a lot of our own ingredients there. It was all really interesting and engaging.
I had a few suppliers in mind who sourced nice tea, but they were mostly from outside the country. Hugo Tea from Kansas, US messaged me and sent some samples this week that I've really been enjoying. I'll have to give more thoughts on those next week as I'm still working my way through.
The Architect told me he'd have plans ready from the engineer by Friday. He did not.
I know better than to expect something that "should be ready by the end of the day Friday", to actually be ready on Friday, and not Monday. In this case it was especially disappointing however, because for one we're already a week behind schedule, and for two it's a three day weekend. Ideally we speak on Tuesday and I can have a general contractor in line by the end of next week.
The workflow of Architect to Contractor goes like this.
The Architect gets you legally in line, he adapts the ideas or plans you give him into plans that will work for the state, the health dept, and contractors doing the work. Before finalizing, if he's not confident or wouldn't like to be liable, he will speak with an engineer who will approve the MEP (Mechanical electrical plumbing.)
Then the business owner approves the plans, then the property owner approves the plans, then you can get started. Depending on your contract, the Architect may hold onto the work until completion; Meaning they'll do construction administrative work, and do the bidding to hire contractors. But more than likely you'll need to hire a general contractor who will do the bidding on individual contractors for water, electric, etc.
Right now, I'm still waiting on the final draft of the plans, to bring to the property manager and then a general contractor. I'm not confident my Architect has been listening to me, I've only managed to get him on the phone twice. However I'm the type of person who reads the EULA, so we'll have a long talk on Tuesday :^).
Have a great long weekend everyone - Eli
