Another Great Book Recc.

 Happy Saturday! I’m drinking strawberry oat milk boba at the Tsaocaa that just opened 5 minutes north of our café in Mandarin. It’s delicious! I unfortunately don’t know what I’m listening to this week here, sounds like it might be K-pop, tried to Shazam it with no luck. This place is popping for the grand opening, the chairs the lights the whole atmosphere is very pastel and cozy, happy to have such sweet neighbors. 

This week I’ve been waiting on concrete, still!

The last thing we need is landlord approval to fill in the floors. I’ve been trying to contact them since yesterday, but since not much gets done fri-sun, we’re stuck waiting until next week. We’re passing and waving goodbye to our estimated completion date, but I’m going to do my absolute best to get things finished this month! 

So I’ve been back on my book game 

To energize myself as I put in work hours at a part time job, I renewed my audible subscription and have now almost completed my third "café reading list" book this year, 2019’s Excellence Wins by the Ritz Carlton co-founder Horst Schulze. It’s the best book on customer service and hospitality I’ve read since Setting the Table, and it's just as interesting with lots of personal anecdotes on applying ideas to businesses of all types.

Ladies and Gentleman Serving Ladies and Gentleman

Is the motto of the Ritz Carlton that speaks to treating both your employees and guests with respect and care. I can remember the first time I visited a café that felt like it was staffed by ladies and gentleman, it was at the Lineage Coffee on E Colonial, in Orlando FL around when they first opened. They had employees who presented themselves as very collected and kind adults, which to me was revolutionary. I had only ever been to chaotic cluttered cafes ran by teens or young adults, and it inspired me to look for more places like this. 

Our aesthetic at Tetherball might not be as simple and elegant, since we're going for a sporty look, but I hope that I can staff with a similar level of service. I intend to give guests a warm and sincere experience that leaves them feeling cared for, and that in return our employees feel like they've been taken care of in their position. 

That's all for this week, here's hoping we bust our some serious progress by next weekend. -Elias

Last Minute Funding

Happy Saturday! I'm drinking a salted caramel oat milk latte at Brew Five Points, and listening to Frankie Cosmos's 2019 album "close it quietly," which is a little more loud and put together than I remember them being with those first couple tender, happy, super simple EP's around 2015.  It's always fun revisiting an artist and hearing how they grow! Hope you're all doing great this weekend and growing towards your potential, reaching up your arms towards infinite possibilities, making that sweet sweet steady progress.

Everything I wanted to do last week, got done!

Mainly I picked up some part time work and used that salary to secure funding for the build out revisions. Last minute Funding is really difficult because everything I've done to build the cafe in the last year has made me look like an increasingly dangerous investment. Some of those things include...

Financing a more reliable car meant I no longer fully owned my car, moving to a house with the storage space for all the equipment shortened how long i'd been at my current residence, opening an account to establish business credit meant I had a lot more revolving credit in use, financing an espresso machine to establish a repair contract meant I had JUST taken out a loan, and quitting my job to begin working on this full time meant I had JUST quit my job. 

Those are all things that I'm proud of, and they all needed to be done to make the cafe happen! Just goes to show you never know, and it's been a crazy first year of work. 

If you're thinking of opening a similar business, my takeaway would be

Do your best to speak with your contractors and city officials about potential changes and costs, remember that every admin action has a fee associated with it, and try not to quit your job until the last possible second, even if you can afford it!

You never know what will come up! There are lots of incremental changes, so think long and hard about everything and overestimate rather than underestimate! Don't be afraid to ask questions at every turn so you have a better understanding of the big picture and what's next! Be proactive with planning for what's next, so that you're ready for every bump on the road.

Grease Traps bb

 Good morning! It’s the last Saturday of February and I’m getting psyched. Eating a king cake doughnut for Mardi Gras from Good Dough, drinking an awesome Ethiopian Yirgacheffe from Vagabond Coffee. Having a good drip makes my whole weekend better, for real. Listening to some Courtney Barnett records and going over the budget again for this month.  

We got hit a little bit on the budget for new construction 

Like I said last week, we had some changes to make mid-work as a result of the previous tenants weird build out. Which meant architect revisions, concrete digging, new plumbing, etc.

This is something I expected, especially since our relatively low construction estimate left room for new work orders down the line. Thankfully it wasn’t very much more, and I should be able to handle it. 

We we’re pretty much exactly on track financially before this change, so I’m picking up some part time work and looking at another small loan to cover my butt.

I also got to learn about grease traps this week

I was led to believe by the Internet and others I worked with until now that I wouldn’t need a grease trap. Talking to the FOG (fat oils and greases) specialist at JEA (our local utilities company), because milk is a fat, I will need one under our three compartment sink.

Grease traps are measured in a couple ways, but in our case it’s by sink capacity and flow rate for our dish sink where waste is drained. We’re going with a tiny under-counter sized sink, and so our capacity is tiny. But it still requires a surprisingly hefty trap. I was able to speak with someone at the city who was super helpful within the week, which for city offices is super fast haha. 

That’s all for now, thanks for reading and have a great week! It’s been hot out there so take care of yourself and drink lots of water with your coffee! - Elias 

A Couple More Weeks of Delay.

Happy Saturday! I'm drinking this giant 32oz vanilla iced latte from Brass Tacks called "Florida Man Style", It's very fun to say and I can't stop. I also won't finish this alone, I'm splitting it with my partner. We're listening to Orville Peck, finally. I feel like I've seen more tattoos of the guy then anything else, turns out the dude's got a great voice. Anyways, this week I found out the previous tenant of our building did more to make this current build difficult, and delay things further.

We've got to break more concrete and redo some plumbing.

This is mainly because our waste drain is not deep enough, and it's in a place we can't relocate. So we need to adjust toilet placement among other things to give waste some more incline. It's not like we're totally starting over, but this will take us some more time on a part of the build that should've wrapped by now. It's also unfortunately going to cost more, so I'm crossing my fingers.

On the bright side, wholesale is locked in.

I talked to our baker again this week and have a price for what we want to do food-wise. I'd like to officially announce coffee/tea/food all in a series of posts closer to opening, but I will say this. Banana bread is on the menu, and I love banana bread, so I'm stoked. Tea and Coffee is by some cool guys who've been super patient, and who I respect a lot as they do big things in the industry, also stoked to work with them. It's cool to have this all priced out, I love being proactive on anything admin when I can.

And hey, this gives me some time for fun stuff.

I can go for more runs and keep working out, I can cook at home and play with my cat. I can prep some social media stuff like templates and posts. It's the calm before the storm, hopefully.

This has definitely been more of a marathon than a sprint. I've officially been working on the café for a year now, which is crazy. Thank you for reading and for sticking with me, opening, asap! - Elias

(Pictured, Dakota my bf/partner and moral support)

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

Moving Concrete! Admin Tasks!

Happy Saturday! I'm listening to Sunny Day Service's "tokyo" album (90's mellow Jpop) and drinking this super strawberry yogurt forward Colombian natural from Cupa Roasters in Orlando. Just ran by the farmers market at Riverside and got produce for the week. Gonna make it my mission to check out the Mandarin market near Tetherball next weekend or ASAP!  

This week construction began with a couple bumps.

We had a miscommunication that resulted in all our concrete rubble being put in the neighbors trash on Monday! Our neighbors let us know and the next morning I got the guys together to remove it. Thankfully everyone was pretty cool about it and I finally got some use out of Carhartt overalls I've had for awhile, dusting them in concrete. 

Another miscommunication resulted in LED light panels being put in, something I would have liked but didn't think we could afford this late in to the project. I was planning on just replacing the bulbs and covers of our current lights, but this rules! and is going to save us a ton on electricity too.

Now it's time to think about opening tasks.

We should complete construction by the end of the month, so along with that physical work I'm getting started on admin tasks and a timeline for them. Adding ourselves to google once we have an opening date, creating inventory and task sheets for the day to day of the shop, even just creating a website to make hiring more streamlined!

The two most common emails I get each week are from wholesale distributers and website builders. I appreciate it! but I like building websites they're fun : ) 

I'm stoked to dive in to all that publicly facing digital design! Especially stuff like employee job outlines and questionnaires! There are some cool physical design ideas we're working on too, but I'm saving those for the reveal of the actual shop, I don't want to spoil everything as it comes. Here's one small thing, some business cards that came in this week:

For now it's back to the nitty gritty admin work, I just finished "Restaurant Prosperity Formula" and it was a great book! It made me think critically about a lot things, and prepared me well for task sheets, prices and more. sooo, back to those!

Have a good weekend everyone, thanks for reading! ~Elias

Construction and Cups!

 Good Morning! Happy Saturday! I'm listening to Boards of Canada's Geogaddi album, before zooming down to Orlando to visit Edge Coffee; I've been finding IDM music to be really productive, easy to zone out too and keep my head down. This week has been crazy busy. I had to get a new car and that ate up a whole day, but there were lots of other little things I'll outline below. 

As mentioned last week, we began construction!

I met with the whole team on Tuesday, and we outlined a rough timeline. We're beginning this weekend with breaking up concrete for plumbing, next week is wall/bar framing, and the following week should be countertops. Sometime in there I'll need to bust out flooring, and after everything is done I'll need to paint the place and replace the ceiling.

The city also asked we get in touch with the Department of Agriculture while we work. So I sent in an app and talked to someone there who said to try again when it's time to open. I mentioned this in a previous blog but they're like the health department equivalent for cafes. I am ServSafe certified from a prior job so I'm somewhat familiar with everything we'll need to be up to code, it's just a matter of scheduling a walkthrough when it's time to open. On the phone he only really seemed concerned with sink placement. we have sinks :)

Cups came in!

We officially have hot and cold cups that I designed, pitch, bought, and redirected to my house! They look great, and they feel like a piece of art. I spent some time trying to find space for the boxes that now reach beyond my garage. Then I set up a lightbox and did some photoshoots. That was also a fun experience, it's crazy how much good lighting adds to a photo. 

I also designed some business cards, since more often than not I'm verbally trying to communicate what and where the cafe is to strangers when it comes up. I'm stoked to have those come in too! It'll be way easier to guarantee an actual connection. 

Personal organization!

I took apart my filing cabinet this week and reorganized all my physical paper from the last year, and did some more tax research on upcoming reporting.  I went through all my emails and responded to some local salesman about POS, packaged food, and laundry services. I don't need anything right now but it was fun talking to them nonetheless. 

I'm ready to take on new projects next week! Have a good weekend everyone! - Elias

Tax Talk 2021

 Good Morning! I'm in a great mood, i'm at the Brass Tacks Coffee in Fruit Cove Jax, listening to the new The Weekend album Dawn FM (fun dance synth pop!). This week I got the booster, got sick, did my taxes, broke my car, then got great news! Our permits are approved by the city! and we can begin construction next week! So we'll talk more about that next weekend. 

This week I want to outline our taxes as a $0 income business in 2021

Exciting I know, and they aren't too different than if we had paid wages. The IRS and State want a lot of the same stuff for reporting purposes. After all, the .gov doesn't know what you've been up to since registering as a business.

Keep in mind I'm not a tax professional.

Even though I have worked two years in a job where I helped people file corporate taxes. As a rule of thumb when searching for tax info online, you should always make sure that it lines up with the IRS instructions on their website. Usually it's easy to google something, get an answer, then google that answer and find an IRS link that confirms it. 

Paying Non-Employees.

People we did pay this year were contractors, and non-employees like architects and builders. Those we paid over $600 to need a 1099-NEC for "non employee compensation." There are a few different types of 1099's, you may have even received one without your own registered business for doing stuff like uber driving or designing a website, they're not too uncommon. 

You'll need to request a W9 from your non-employees which have their basic tax info, then you can use that to fill out their 1099, send one to the IRS and one back to the non-employee. 

Paying Employees

We had no employees, meaning they didn't fill out any I9's (proving they're registered to work in the US) or W4's (explaining their filing status). So we're not filing W2's this year! Sweet!

Reporting Employee Taxes

Despite not having any employees this year we still need to file the 941 to report quarterly income, social security, and medicare taxes that would normally be withheld from employee paychecks. We did this last quarter too and it's basically zero'd out for the fields that do apply to us.

We also had to file a zero amount for our annual 940 (FUTA) form for reporting federal unemployment taxes, and the state equivalent SUTA or FL reemployment tax.

Reporting our LLC taxes

To report our taxes as an LLC with a couple members we filed the 1065 (US return of partnership income). This declares our profits, losses and deductions. We had no profits but since we paid rent for our building we did have that as a deduction. Which hey, translated to a bigger return on our personal incomes. 

As part of this form we also filled out a 1125-A to report cost of goods sold, meaning cost of inventory and labor. We filled out a Schedule B to opt out of an audit for LLC's with over a hundred members (we have, two). We filled out K-1's which are sort of a W2 equivalent for partnerships and break up the LLC's income and loss as it applies to individuals. I had to fill out like 7 K-1's in total by hand to attach to a few different forms. 

We then filled out some state returns like the 1065 equivalent F-1065, and the first quarterly report on  DR-15 for our sales and use tax. For most people FL does not have a state income tax so that was nice. I still need to submit our Reemployment return, that was one I assumed was not required since we had no employees but the state mailed me asking us to anyways. 

I did this all by hand, and it ended up being about 30 pages. It took weeks, but it was totally doable.

I'm hoping this is helpful to someone

One of the most common responses I get when I say I'm working on opening a coffee shop is, "oh I want to my own coffee shop one day" or "I want to open another business where I do X one day." 

And I want everyone to make that happen! If you put in some time, anything is possible, taxes are just another obstacle. Again just reference the IRS website. You can do it~! 

Thanks for reading, have a great weekend! - Elias

A Bright Spot on the Map

Happy Saturday! I'm drinking espresso at Brew five points and listening to Red (Taylor's Version). It's like a new mix of the 2012 album,  sounds good, a little more bass heavy and suuper long; This week I've just been preparing taxes for the year, I think i'll talk more about that next week once i'm done and certain about how to describe it all. I also got our corrected permits back to the city for review so that's awesome, stuff is moving. 

This week I want to talk about aspirations as a cafe

Our roaster boys at Valor Coffee (Ross, Ethan, Riley) started a podcast this week called "coffee sometimes" that has been a lot of fun to listen to, especially after getting to visit. Their personalities and chemistry lend really well to the format so go listen! In the first couple episodes they describe their ambitions from just getting people to try weird coffee, to cultivating a culture around their cafe, Valor, to improving the fabric of the community wherever they end up. Ross says:

The goal is to be a bright spot on the map

That's right! Coffee shops are so cool! they've got the ability to be a fun positive hang out spot, a gathering place for serious personal progress, and a springboard for just about anything you can imagine. There was definitely a time when I was just so stoked on sharing excellent coffee that it was everything, but my second passion traveling has connected those dots in a way that painted a bigger picture. The spaces themselves have a bigger impact as a microcosm of community energy. My goal is to be one of those spaces that uplifts the area.

Like I shout out in the mission >>>

We're giving people energy! That's our baristas, our guests, our vendors and everyone in between. It's been easy to get a foot in the door here and there because cafes are kind of inherently a cool space, now it's time to maintain, build and execute. Thinking about how we can create a great place to work and visit will be the cornerstone of a great cafe. It's been awesome working with people like Valor who are making that happen, because it's giving me energy to make it happen!

So here's to pushing forward as we get closer to open, have a great week everyone, thanks for reading!

Preparing City Corrections

 Good morning, and happy first full weekend of the new year! I mentioned last week that a lot of our contacts went away for the holidays, it seems like we're now getting back on track. I'm feeling ill so I'm quarantined, getting tested today, and drinking decaf tea at home with the windows open for some nice Jacksonville traffic ambience. 

A Recap of City Submission Steps

This blog's purpose is to share the process and inspire others, by breaking things down as we go. Let's do a quick recap of the submission steps. 

Because our building used to be a sewing studio, I began by submitting a certificate of use form, for a change of use. If the previous use was also a café, it would have been just a certificate of use; Both are confusingly abbreviated most of the time as COU.

I submitted the COU in November ahead of my contractors to get things moving, at the time I was also allowed to include my permits (drawings of the general build out, plumbing, electric, hvac) from my architect. These were both rejected and returned to me in late December with notes.

Each time you submit you get a lower guaranteed turnaround time on city comments, so my next submission should be back to me within a couple weeks with a response. 

There were a few changes I had to have our architect make this time for the fire marshal, but mostly I just needed a scope of work outline and a few other things from the general contractor. You're supposed to take the correction request list from the city and write out a sort of Q&A to ensure each issue is addressed, which I feel helped me better understand the changes.  

Now it's time to gather paperwork to submit for city corrections.

So, along with the corrected permits and new COU application, I'll also need to write out the above Q&A document. The general contractor had me sign and notarize a "building permit application," use our contract as a scope of work, and gave us an asbestos notification statement; all for the city. The land owner had me sign and notarize a "notice of commencement" for city-submission, which will also be used for them to draft a letter of authorization to keep on site during construction.

I have most of that done now, and I think that about does it. I'm hoping to get it submitted early next week! As always, I'll let you know by the following Saturday.

That's all for now, thanks for reading and have a good weekend :^) - Elias!

Holiday Lag

 Good Morning! Happy 2022! I'm at Brew Coffee, writing this blog and listening to some 2000's bass hunter and other similarly energizing/corny dance music. As things wrapped last weekend on the holidays, everyone who was working with us to get the cafe built took some time off. Like I said in our holiday Q&A video, we were hoping to open in late December, but now I don't think that would have been possible even if we were more on track.

Everyone disappeared in late December

The last couple weeks have been a frustrating combination reaching out to no responses, or a "i'll be back in x days," resulting in minimal work on my end. There were a handful of people who were there to answer questions, and I did get our ceiling materials ordered, but I was really hoping to make some big progress these last two weeks that just didn't happen.

Let's look on the bright side

Everyone I'm working with has had the opportunity to take a break during the holidays, and that feels good. It's nice to know i'm working with companies that respect their employees time off. I got to read a couple new books and make gifts for friends, bake some annual cookie tins and sleep in. I'm getting faster at excel, and updated some existing sheets with more concrete numbers based on ordering. 

I'm going to continue doing what I can to prepare for opening, and push construction along as quickly as the city will let me. I'll be designing menus very soon, i'm excited to share those here and get some feedback. I'll talk more about this soon, but designing menus has so many things to consider! 

For now there's not too much more to share, happy new years again everyone, thanks for reading :^)

- Elias

Doing Inventory of all the Ordering

 Hey! What's up! Early Merry Christmas, late Happy Hannukah, very early happy Kwanzaa. I'm drinking water, I just took a shower, I'm listening to the psych rock album "butterfly 3000" and keeping my head down. Jumped away to write a blog, as I'm finally done with doing shop inventory! So I wanna talk about that and our city situation real quick.

So we got our permits back from the city this week!

But, we're not done. They're now asking we resubmit with some corrections. I've been following the notes online as they're added, and had our architect make changes based on the fire marshal corrections. The rest of what we need is basically a contractor scope of work outline. So I'm hoping our contractors can get this resubmitted without issue, I probably won't know for sure until early next week what's next.

So I took inventory of all the boxes from the last month of ordering. 

They have almost completely filled my garage so now's a good time; To do this I took my cost excel I was using for the entire café and stripped it down to just things I'd ordered or would be ordering. It was mostly a matter of opening every box, confirming the contents, marking them off on my excel sheet then on the printed receipts taped to those boxes, and repacking them. I'd mark the top of the box with a sharpie so it'd be easier to find next time. I've attached what that looked like at the bottom of the page here, it's not perfect but it worked for today. This was something that needed to happen and did help me find a couple returns I'd need to make.

I did quickly run out of tape trying to reseal everything, if I could even repackage it perfectly. In some cases packages were air tight and a pain to pull apart then tape together again, in others they were packed with peanuts (who uses those anymore!) or just full of empty lopsided space and had to be massively consolidated. I got a whole box I didn't order of Gatorade caps! I got a box of cups that were the wrong size and finished! Time to get back on my computer and return, reorder, keep moving.

The good news is, I have basically everything for the cafe in my garage.

6 months ago I didn't even have a garage. I'm glad this all happened the way it did.
I'm stoked to get in there, lay floors and put the space together. We have a few more weeks of city permitting construction and that'll be it. It's gonna be great to pull shots on bar again! thanks for reading, have an awesome holiday, I may not have time to post next Saturday but if something big happens before then I'll put something up! 

 - Elias

Baked Good Gameplan

 What's up! Good afternoon! I'm drinking more Bird Blend coffee from The Flamingo in Murray Hill Jacksonville. I'll have a tiktok for that up shortly after this (@tetherball.coffee). I've been in and out of the house this week trying to be prepared for the bigger café orders and meet with contractors and wholesale folks. I'll be heading to Georgia tomorrow night to visit our roasters in Alpharetta. 

Today let's talk about baked goods and the plan

So we've got a tiny build; Like I've discussed in previous blogs, this build is small so that I can control every aspect of the space affordably, and make something awesome. I don't have space for a kitchen, as much as I love to bake and as much as I loved having done so professionally in the past. I have space for a toaster oven if absolutely necessary, along with a little bit of fridge space. 

So no frozen stuff, no baking in house. 

So room temp, what could I do? Three things I knew I wanted were: 

1. A sweet basic item that paired well with coffee

2. Something with actual substance that would make a decent breakfast

3. A rotating seasonal item. Ideally with some fresh fruit or something that made it seasonal. 

In my head these would be a croissant or biscotti, a cinnamon roll, and a fruit danish.  If I were to bake minimally in house they'd end up being thick toast with honey PB, avocado, and fresh fruit. 

I wasn't particularly married to either of these ideas. The first three are pretty unoriginal and difficult to source in my location without a frozen bulk-pack from a low quality chain supplier. The second three would mean a prep station and workers covering those builds to ensure quality, for a pretty minimal return on investment. 

After talking to our tentative local baker we decided on doing sweet breads, and picking up a couple of times a week for now. Meaning for example we cut slices from a loaf of double chocolate chip bread, banana bread, and pumpkin or lemon poppy bread. 

This seems pretty perfect.

To me a loaf is great at room temp, it's got potential for a lot of variety, and it's substantial enough to make a good breakfast. It's also something I'd love to eat myself, and would be happy to send home with employees at the end of it's lifespan. 

I'm looking forward to ordering these soon and reporting back. Any excuse to eat bread is good in my book :^)

Have a great weekend y'all - Elias

Demolition Complete!

Good afternoon! I'm drinking the Bird Blend coffee from (NE Jacksonville's) Murray Hill Coffee Shop / Bar "The Flamingo." I'm listening to my Spotify wrapped which is mostly the K-Rock band "Drinking Boys and Girls Choir." I'm uh, finally able to type again.

Demolition took a little longer than expected.

I mean we did mostly break it down in a weekend, but overall it took about a week. We started with the cabinets and partition walls on Saturday/Sunday, which wasn't too tough outside of a little chiseling around electrical. We realized we were being super loud when our neighbors asked us to stop hammering and destroying walls next door haha. So after that first day we began working overnight.

After the weekend we had to tackle the flooring. Some of it was installed very lazily, which meant it was easy to lift up with a crowbar and toss aside. Some of it was properly sealed, which meant minutes of chiseling per tile. After something like 5-6 hours of that we were done and decided to actually move the tile to the trash another day.

Unfortunately the next morning I realized I had hurt my shoulder. 

All that hammering had made my left arm, which was holding the chisel or crowbar, so swollen around the shoulder I could barely move it. It figures that after breaking a couple tools in the process I'd end up hurting myself too. So we took a couple days off and came back to do debris removal later. In that time I was mostly making phone calls because I couldn't easily type or drive. 

All in all construction was pushed back another week. 

Thankfully today my shoulder is fine, it wasn't totally the issue that postponed construction. That was mainly some back and forth over the terms of our agreement. I had some notes, we had some restructuring around price, I'm now trying to clear it with the property manager who's sometimes difficult to get ahold of. 

Anyways, we'll still likely open either at the end of December or early January as long as everything goes well. In February of this year I made a survey on IG asking whether I should open a cafe in 2021 (more mid-pandemic); To those who said yes, you might just get your wish. :)

I'll keep working as hard as I can! 

- Elias

Leaving my Day-Job and Taking Out a Loan

 Good morning and happy Saturday! Hope you personally had a good holiday and ate a bunch of great food. I was thankful to have a couple of friends-giving events and eat a lot of biscuits, I'm a big fan. Today I'm listening to some audio books, drinking matcha and doing lots of yard work. This is my first year living through fall in a house and I guess I just assumed Florida didn't have leaves. Well anyways haha,

Last week I left my day-job

It was something I'd put a lot of time in to studying, so it's a bit sad knowing I might never work in taxes again. At least I'll get to do my own now for the café, and be more or less familiar with the process. Leaving this week was necessary to get things done on time.

I've been trying to time this all perfectly. Taking out a loan, leaving my job, buying equipment on Black Friday, and beginning construction from there was all part of the plan. Doing it all in one week was incredibly stressful, but I'll know soon how well the plan worked. 

The last thing I'm waiting on now is a final construction quote. I had an estimate but it was time to get serious and choose our contractor. 

Ideally this quote is near the original estimate for the project, if it's exponentially higher we'll have to re-negotiate and push things back. I'll be doing the flooring and demolition myself along with a few other small touch ups to lower the cost. Legally I can't do as much as I'd like, but it is what it is.

At the very least, buying everything on Black Friday was a good move

This took me all day; Making accounts on every website, writing down codes and passwords, keeping track of my carts and updating my 200 item excel. Occasionally something would sell out or be cheaper somewhere else. 

I finished at like 2am this morning, but for the most part I was able to reduce my costs well below the additional charges on shipping and taxes. I would recommend to anyone considering this tactic, to make accounts and prepare a list for each site a day in advance. 

From here it's GO TIME

I've got to order everything else, store it and label it all in my garage as it comes in, and begin demolition on the building. I guess once it's time to move the equipment in I'll just rent a U-Haul. If only I could tell my past self to buy a truck instead of a hatchback. Between work I'll probably just do some Uber-eats driving to supplement my savings or unexpected café costs, and familiarize myself with Mandarin a little more too. 

Thanks for reading! I hope to have good news for the blog next week!

Peace! - Elias 

Excel-Hxll, or How I Learned to Stop Worrying & Love the Google Cloud

 What's up, happy Saturday! I've drank so much cinnamon this week, I'm thinking seriously about chai and listening to that new Silk Sonic album (I love Bruno Mars, the cornier the better). I've been working on redoing all of my budgeting this week as I wait eternally for new quotes (see last week's blog). I was really hoping I could take those quotes and budget accordingly, but without the luxury of time I'm just going to do hypothetical spreadsheets so I'm battle tested ahead of time. 

The Google Cloud used to suck.

My relationship with the google cloud began when I got my Chromebook a couple of years ago, and it was one of the only programs I could use to write in without my computer crashing. The Chromebook was the only laptop I could afford (about $250-300), and the google cloud was free, so I would make it work.

At that time you couldn't organize documents in folders from individual programs like docs or sheets by clicking and dragging. You had to open each one and change the file path. you could kind of share files individually and you could kind of hold meetings through hangouts to talk. The ability to create and share existed, but the navigation was very slow and chunky.

I learned to love the Google Cloud this year.

Flash Forward to 2021 and you have faster, better file sharing through Google drive. The drive had existed for awhile, but now click and drag made it much more practical. It's a remote hard drive where you can create folders and move files around from any of googles widgets like Docs (word), Sheets (Excel), and Slides (Powerpoint). When you share a link to a folder it gives the person you share it with access to everything in that folder.

This means if I need to share a handful or large documents like my architect permits, I can put them in a folder and email someone a link. Rather than hoping we aren't kneecapped by the file size limit somewhere along the way. Or hoping they don't miss something in that email because of how it's formatted. 

Because you can access the drive through apps or mobile browsers, if I need any one piece of business information for a phone call or meeting it's easy to find. I'm constantly hitting walls where I need my EIN or some other piece of obscure information and I'm saved by the cloud. 

So that brings me to today

I'm making my 8th giant "sheet," which has a link up top tying it to my millionth giant "doc", which has dozens of smaller links to equipment buying locations. These are all easily managed and opened/closed through web browser tabs in Chrome. As a power user at my day job of tons of Microsoft/third party applications, I hate it! Juggling dozens of apps and their performance sucks, when Google makes it feel so much better. 

That's all I wanted to say, as I am creating more and more it's just nice to have stuff in a cloud. Thanks for reading, peace. - Elias

Ping Pong with the City / Contractors

 Good morning, it's November and we're one month closer to opening shop. This weekend I'm focused on re-budgeting as we wait on more quotes, I can't budget in full yet, but it's something to get started on anyways as time runs short. I'm listening to the new album from "Ross from Friends", some quiet electronic and black coffee from reanimator as it storms like crazy outside. 

The City

I've been told a few times during this process that the city paperwork would be the slowest part; As far as I can tell now that's not true. For one thing the process of finding an available architect and then general contractor at my size has been incredibly tedious and slow. collectively taking almost four months now, and extending to at least 5 soon. The city by contrast has been pretty comfortingly bureaucratic, it was simple to get the COU (certificate of/change of use form), fill it out and submit it; That took about three weeks. 

The city also needs to review our build out plans (permits), which because I went through an architect should be a formality. Normally permits are submitted by your contractors (builders), but after speaking with the office they let me submit mine ahead of time, so that by the time I have a contractor (hopefully in the next week or two) they don't need to start at the back of the line with that paperwork.

On the city website the estimates on paperwork are very conservative, with a lot of processes estimated at 8-10 weeks, but in person you can get a better estimate. I was thankful to find out that more of the time it's like ten-fifteen business days or 2-3 weeks. In summary it's possible our paperwork will be ready around December 1st, which would be great since i'd estimate a couple more weeks of construction from there.

The Contractors

 I allotted myself a month to really blow up every contractor in Jacksonville for an estimate. Of the ten to twenty I emailed and called regularly for those few weeks, three got back to me that were typically taking smaller commercial projects; Even so, two were not interested in a project of this size. One surveyed the site and gave me an estimate that was double my budget, and so I extended my time to try and get another quote. 

Ultimately it'll cost what it costs, this is something I've had to tell myself a lot.

if I need to settle and take out a larger loan to get this done on time, it'll be worth the money I'm bleeding by not opening in December or January, especially at this low rent for the area. The important thing is to get a couple quotes and take out what I need the first time, so again I'm budgeting as accurately as I can and holding off for a second opinion.

Right now it's possible I'll open by the end of the year, and hey that's the goal. Have a good weekend everyone. - Elias

Visiting NYC

Happy Halloween weekend!!! I hope you're feeling the spirit of Fall, cool weather has hit us way earlier than usual this year in FL and it's definitely a nice change of pace. I'm recovering from traveling today outside with a sweater and some spicy chai sent over from Hugo Tea, listening to Haitus Kaiyote. Logan from Hugo who does their social media and sourcing has been a real wealth of knowledge when thinking about tea; Things like sifting and brewing Matcha at low temp have made me think about having a lower temp kettle on the bar for example. 

So I visited NYC this last weekend with my boyfriend and a barista friend, trying to hit as many interesting cafes as possible in three days. We also tried huge chewy bagels, cereal milk everything at milk bar, and some amazing pastries from Supermoon Bakehouse that weighed like a pound each. Obviously, we also tried a lot of coffee, but unlike some revolutionary food experiences, I know what to expect from great coffee. 

The real reason I wanted to see and experience these great cafes was to understand the customer experience, the beautiful build-outs, the menus, and the presentation. 

I've done this a few times before up the east and west coast along with most of Florida, it's a great way to find something you might not expect and to have conversations with others later on who've visited the same places, it's a small world. Anyways, I just want to highlight two of my favorites. 

Sey coffee was fantastic

despite being a bit of a walk, through long Brooklyn back-streets, there was a huge line and an interesting arrangement of seating options once we made it inside. The customer line was from the front door to the counter, and then from there, you could walk further around the counter to the waiting area, or back behind you to an elevated bench area. In this way despite being a small-medium shop, all three areas were separated cleanly. One group waited in line, one was sitting down, one was waiting for their coffee. 

It all felt very comfortable, they had a nice wooden standup menu waiting for you in front, with alternating coffees and teas. Despite being very dense it was also very readable, the prices were high but reading through them it felt like they were worth the cost, and the bustling shop added to the perceived value. 

I'd also be remiss to mention the giant hanging plant near the center skylight, that was making its way from 15 feet up in the air, towards the floor. Then there was the bench stretching along the back wall, despite being thick wood it was worn in and angled back! it looked actually comfortable, but there was no space to sit. After leaving I shared some pictures and one of the heads Matthew Jung-Quillen DM'd me to say thanks for visiting. he's a wonderful dude in the world of coffee that I've been aware of for a while, so that was great to see.

Drip was very personable and unique

after traveling as fast as physically possible for the last few days, huddling into the small unguarded Drip in Brooklyn was like a breath of fresh air. we took off our coats and stepped aside as others stood up, to marvel at the wholesale options on display and talk without the city noise. I've been to a lot of "multi-roaster" cafes, but this shop had a stunning selection like nothing else. Coffee from China and Haiti, notable roasters I've only had the rare import of like the Netherland's Manhattan, or Gainesville's favorite Resident.

 we talked to our baristas for a long while about what they had and what they liked, before getting an espresso and a drip. the build was tight and its pace was slow enough to allow for this sort of thing. I imagine they do a lot of wholesale and deservedly so. 

Other key takeaways

Most places were very busy, meaning some shops had beautifully designed workflows that just didn't pan out at the pace they were going; It made me think about designing for ordering fast and slow, and how to consider employee interaction at that pace. Menus generally were a little bigger than I expected, and I was surprised by how well they were organized, it gave me confidence in carefully pushing my menu a little larger. A lot of places that were doing seasonal specials would tie visuals to those specials, I really like the idea of having an image to associate with specials and avoiding a long written list. 

In Summary

It was nice to visit a place as inherently competitive as NYC, it necessitates a clear picture for cafe concepts that work well and efficiently. I'm very excited to get open now that we're only a month or two away. I was planning on visiting ATL and Chicago this month, but I think I can be comfortable just visiting ATL now since it's not too far.

Have a great Halloween everyone, -Eli 

Making a People List! Maintaining Connections!

 Hey Good afternoon! I hope you've all had a good week and have Halloween costumers picked out, or friends who are stoked to wear theirs. I'm listening to the new PinkPantheress album, think Drum and Bass R&B. Drinking a Biscoff Latte at the new Brass Tacks in fruit Cove. It's actually really nice to have a cafe like 5-10 minutes from our own, previously if I needed to come out this way and then do work afterwards I basically just came back home. 

Funnily enough until recently I lived across the street from the other Brass Tacks in south side, so I also used to do a lot of work there. This location was announced after I had already signed the lease on Tetherball's building, so I can't really say if it would have had an impact on my choice, but I don't think so, I really love Mandarin and this isn't quite in the same area. Anyways, today I want to talk about making connections as a business owner, and how I'm managing them or trying to.

I've started a "People List" To keep everyone in mind.

I originally got this idea from the book "The 27 Challenges Managers Face...", one of the books i'm reading ahead of fleshing out employee documents. The idea is to keep a list of people you'd like to maintain a regular good relationship with, including those you manage and more; Then write down the last time you spoke with them, what about, when you'd like to talk again and about what. 

I started this because I've been trying to get a business credit card for something like four months. I applied and was approved, but it was mailed to the wrong address twice. Because I failed to follow up with the person who set this up at the bank, and would forget about them for weeks at a time, I still don't have this credit card. There were a few other variables but the point is, If I had cared to put this person on a list and keep thinking about them while they were important then I wouldn't be in this situation. 

Another example where I'd like to do better is with my tentative tea supplier. We've talked twice and I've had some good samples, but I still haven't tried every tea I'd like to, and I still don't have a contact there I feel like I know personally. While I work to improve that relationship I'm working to strengthen others.

I've had a couple of long talks with our tentative coffee supplier recently and it was because I insisted on a follow up after this "People list." Now I feel like I know their story and that we have a strong mutual relationship. I'm hoping to maintain this list for all important contacts, but also for my employees once we get started. 

Without getting too much into it, making time for the people that matter will be one way I hope to do well in the long term with this business. 

We'll see how it does, but if you have a lot of contacts you're having trouble organizing I encourage you to try out a people list and see if it can benefit you in some way.

 Thank you for reading, -Elias

Finding a GC (General Contractor)

 Good Morning, happy Saturday! We just got back from a wedding in Lake City, it was a really beautiful drive. I love the stretches of FL road near the panhandle that are carved through deep tall forests and hills, versus the more central FL highways that are super flat and uninteresting. I'm listening to Frank Ocean's Channel Orange on repeat, and drinking more of that great coffee I had last week from Black and White Roasters at Brew Five Points. 

On Thursday I had a demo meeting with Square.

I've used tons of Square hardware and software over the years, but it was nice to get a refresher on what's new. Two things that stood out to me were a KDS system (only about a year old now), and the ability to save multiple menus. Meaning we can keep a second tablet for viewing and marking tickets as complete on the bar, and secondary menus for events or seasonals can be swapped without re-arranging our entire POS. I don't know if I'll use either to begin with, but both are new welcome additions to what I'm familiar with.

Early this morning, I had our first GC survey the space.

In the 3 months that this space has belonged to me, no one I've worked with has wanted to enter the space. Even the architect who did our plans worked with just my pictures. I don't know if that says more about me or them, but it was kind of nice to be able to let someone in to the space for the first time. They didn't have too many more questions and we were able to knock them out, as always it's better to talk in person when you want to make intentions clear. I told them my budget and that I'd like to do the flooring and drop ceiling replacement myself. They said they'd get back to me in a week.

They also asked for a timeline, which like I said in our last blog would be breaking ground around thanksgiving, and doing the construction we can while we wait for city permit approval. I'm still waiting on a new draft of those papers from our architect/engineer, and another GC quote from the property manager's in house team. 

Once I have a couple of quotes and an idea of actual construction costs...

I get to redo all my paperwork with more concrete estimates. Which will tell me how much I need for a loan beyond what I have now. then it's really go time. In the meantime I'm going to get started on employee facing paperwork, more on that next week. 

Thanks for reading, -Elias