Jason Haeger Staying motivated during the depressing days of the “startup”. It’s hard to stay motivated towards quality and customer service when you’re running at a loss and aren’t even taking in enough profits to pay yourself for your time. Outside of that, the hardest part is education.. on both sides of the bar. Keeping the staff in check with your standards for quality and keeping customers interested in learning more about the coffee they drink. One of these is more of a pain than the other.. I won’t mention which. Just my $.02 0 Reply August 6, 2006
Jason I agree Jason. Endurance and the ability to be consistent in your prep, presentation, and quality is key. It is also tough to stay flexible and be able to react to new industry trends and products. This is the joy of being an independent. You do not have to go through a large board and approval system to change menus and features. It is tough though to keep new things coming and keep customer’s interested. ..be bold 0 Reply August 9, 2006
Austin I think we are fortunate to not have the startup issues up here being that our only coffee competition burned down before we got started. (As in it burned down and we then started working on a business plan) So people needed us here. But as a result education is a huge difficulty both with baristas and customers. In a town where people consider Farmers Bros or Circle K to be great coffee we dont have to keep our product in tip top shape in order to keep people in the doors. I would say that the constant vigilance for quality is pretty tough. I think people have a tendency to slip and get lazy over time. Raising standards and then forcing yourself to keep them that way. I imagine it works the same in the valley where people love their 36oz single shot “cappucinno”. 0 Reply August 10, 2006
