Setting Sales Goals & Employee Expectations

 Good Morning! Happy Saturday, I'm drinking more Colombia natural black from Cupa roasters in Orlando. (link) Still tastes like yogurt and strawberry wine, great coffee. I'm listening to this super long, new ambient electronic album from Vegyn. Great working music! This week has been mostly digital work while I wait for the construction crew to need me again. Two highlights are an updated monthly budget with sales goals, and a plan for employees. 

Re-Budgeting 

The first budgeting document I created for the café back in summer '21 was a big spreadsheet outline of everything we'd need to buy, and an estimate for dry goods, wet good, and monthly recurring costs like rent or insurance. At the end I summarized how much we'd need to make based on what we've spent and what we owe.

I've updated it a few times, but that document isn't really applicable anymore, because I've bought everything we need, and continuing to use it is just creating unnecessary work in a huge excel. So I stripped it down and updated it. Now it's just a column for monthly building costs, non perishable goods, perishable goods, and each totaled to estimate our monthly expenses. 

I'm using rent = 10% of gross annual sales as a benchmark for what we ideally make. Then thinking of it as "I need to sell this many drinks to hit that number, so I'm using this much of each material on the chart to make those drinks." Which helps me break it down with a bunch of estimates.

that gross annual sales number is fairly high, our immediate goal is actually paying the bills, which is something like 48% of that. So I did the same chart again but with 48% of each total. This should also help me with how much perishable product to purchase right away, and have an idea of my daily sales goals.

I also looked at how much I'd like to pay employees and what that'll cost me overall. Then charted how much we need to make to hire one employee, and then 2, etc." Initially I had saved the money to hire employees soon after opening regardless of sales, but due to several factors that's no longer the case. Thankfully I have years of experience working a café alone and feel confident I can handle it initially. It'll be cool to see every new guest face to face for awhile.

Employee Job Outline

I also created a job description contract that outlines our values and what employees are expected to handle. Valor, our roaster, sent me theirs and it was a great springboard to make something really special with unique branding. It's actually something I'm hesitant to share here because if it was taken by someone who didn't embody those values, I think it'd be dishonest and hurtful to give an employee expectations they don't intend to meet.

My intention is to have people interested fill out a short application on our website, then I'd give them a call and follow up with that contract in an email before we meet again. if they've signed because they understand the position and agree to it, and our meeting goes well, I'll give them the formal job offer.

I'd like them to jump through a couple hoops to help weed out spam or half hearted applications, but I'd also like to provide them with a good idea of what they're getting in to. Something I really appreciated in my first serious coffee job was a contract and training manual that I could take home and read, that I was then quizzed on. I didn't' know a lot about coffee and it wasn't as easy to get answers on the internet at the time, it set the tone of the shop well and forced me to learn my stuff. Like, "hey this shop cares that I care, and can do my job, and want to do my job."

I realize that this might make it hard to get some applicants in the door but again that's okay, this doesn't have to be for everyone. back to work! have a great weekend everyone! - Elias