Keys To The Shop : Equipping Coffee Shop Leaders

One of the most heartbreaking things I see is when an established cafe is forced to upend everything due to changes to the cost or use of a space that they do not own. All the dreams, emotions, investment in the space itself, and developing a customer bases habits around that location are all up in the air. While renti

Managing in a cafe is one of the ultimate forms of leadership. Part of leading as a manager is planning for, responding to, or avoiding altogether, problems with people, operations, and quality. But instead of spending our best energies in prevention of problems, we tend to manage reactively when problems turn into a c

The Industry. What does that even mean? Owners and professionals use this term as though it has specific power to give clarity or meaning to the work they do, when in fact it is merely the most readily observable manifestation of millions of individual decisions across the supply chain, all made worse when based on a f

Hiring is probably the most important decision you make in your coffee shop. As important as it is to choose the right people, we often are at the mercy of bad habits or are missing key practices we need to make that decisions and end up making too many mistakes that drain you, the business, and the your team of energy

In the the coffee industry, we all need help and we can all give help. In order to truly advance our own careers and those of others we want find success we need plan for and practice mentorship. The trouble is that the need we have for help also creates a lot of insecurities and the idea of mentorship can sound rather

Making decisions about who to hire or even who might need to be let go are some of the hardest but most important decisions to make in a coffee shop. So hard in fact that we can often fall into avoiding the decision by deferring to our existing staff for their opinion on who is or is not a good fit. While involving key