This is Part 4 of our multi-part series following the journey of our intrepid consulting chef as he works to open a new coffee shop for his client. You can navigate to part 1 (planning) and part 2 (creating the menu) and part 3 (staffing and the food critic). His story continues…
It’s a fantastic feeling to be around a new business starting out, sure mistakes are made but we use this to become stronger and better. Importantly, we need to remember what we set out to do, thinking back to that first day and the comments from Neil the food critic “restaurant quality food in a coffee shop”, it’s a great reminder to the team when times are tough, never change what we set out to achieve, customer services and quality are important.
One thing to change was the chef yes, he was a good cook, but we have to be a team, work as a team and respect each other. I think in our industry there has never been a place for anyone who doesn’t follow that, sadly some people can’t change and he has left. Now have a new number 1 and 2 in the kitchen with great support from a small team of kitchen porters, we have moved on.
The food continues to be that top quality that we promised the client, it’s what they deserve, the team understand what we want and what the customer wants and are already testing new ideas for the next menu, we start to think about the colder months, food that can give us a big hug, homely, warming but keeping that depth of flavour, let’s keep exciting people.
With any food business we need to keep both our business and our offer exciting. Never stop, keep pushing, keep developing. As we know restaurant, pubs and coffee shops close daily. The big boys even have to close businesses down meaning staff face unemployment, suppliers not being paid and they all say the same thing:
“I took my eye of the ball”
“I thought the customers liked what we did”
And they did at one time but lift your head look what’s around, things change, we change, and food trends change. Don’t get left behind when the world has moved on that would be a disaster.
So, it’s time to move on to our next adventure for a new client, we planted the seed and watched the cherry grow and what a great coffee shop it is but now back out into the Wilderness with something very different.
[Editor] We’re very excited to be bringing you the next story from our roving chef’s new venture, Wilderness.
