How He Started a Coffee Business (With $1,800)

have you ever wondered why some businesses run so smoothly while others are like a train wreck we started narrative coffee in 2015 and we've been building better systems ever since they have to be able to multitask so they can make coffee and ring in orders at the same time we invested in things that i knew would give us our best chance at return a lot of people put their retail after the point of sale which never works how much are you spending on an average month for advertising nothing so we built a spreadsheet that tracks the raw ingredient costs i call it instagram bait because it just makes for better pictures so anytime people cross paths is a time where you lose efficiency we're going to show you guys how to start a coffee shop improve its efficiency and expand on multiple locations so let's go say hi to maxwell maxwell tell us when you first opened narrative yeah and the reason you got into coffee tell us the story behind that totally yeah i'll start with the reason why i got in a coffee i was just had a really amazing latte one day at uh zoca coffee down in kirkland okay um and it blew my mind and i just got super into it and started researching it and learning about it and just invested a ton of time into it and no prior coffee experience no barista experience no business experience nothing just super into it and uh tried that coffee yeah it was it was great and then we opened narrative uh we launched a copy cart in on july 4th 2016. okay and then we open our brick and mortar which we're sitting in right now on june 9th 2017. 2017. so you've been here for a number of years [Music] maxwell tell us when you first opened what was the biggest struggle or a business problem that you faced definitely that we were underpriced so we are cogs were just really high um so we were basically either not making money or losing money every time we were selling something okay why don't we share how you solve that problem later on in the video so you guys keep watching because maxwell obviously solved that yeah and now you're flourishing let's talk about systems or sops that have helped you overcome your early challenges yeah as a coffee shop operator yeah one of our bigger things that we spend a lot of effort on is developing a full spreadsheet where we keep track of all of our costs one thing that's really easy to happen is you just go to the store you cost something out once and then you feel like it's set for a while and then you don't look at your costs again for a bit and all of a sudden everything has gone up and now you're you know throwing money away so we built a spreadsheet that tracks the raw ingredient cost and takes every recipe in the entire store breaks it down by each ingredient so that way whenever our we do a quarterly audit of our cogs that way every time one of our ingredient costs goes up it's reflected in every recipe costs so we can stay on top of our costs at all times is that automatic connected to your just provider or is that a spreadsheet you created it's in google docs yeah we use an excel spreadsheet yeah so it's got multiple pages we have like a master page that has every raw ingredient so like flour and milk and butter and all those sorts of things broken down at a gram level and then we weigh everything so everything is uh done by mass that way we're really consistent reduces our waste and then we also know exactly how much of each product goes into everything and we account for everything from you know take away with cups and sleeves and lids all those small costs they all add up i want to add value to our viewers who maybe don't have that system in place what can they do today to get that in place and start saving start making more yeah definitely i think that uh one they can email me i'd be happy to help them uh with that uh we could share that that cheat with them um you guys she's willing to share that yeah maxwell narrative.coffee there you go

uh but then also if you just want to build it yourself it's not too difficult you just go in and find all your ingredients break them down by the weight how much you paid for it and then make a unit out of it and then every time you use that ingredient in a recipe you just include that unit [Music] when you open your second location did you do anything differently as compared to opening up this one yeah it was a sort of a different situation that we were coming into a kind of pre it was a coffee shop prior so we had to do some construction things that were around making it work for our systems and how we operate but as far as the systems themselves and how we do things almost everything is identical our food menu is slightly smaller just given the constraints of the space yeah but everything's pretty much pretty much similar how did you know you were ready for a second location um we had a really strong team so i knew that we had good managers in place that could facilitate continuing to run this place well i've always tried to take the work myself out of a job type of of an approach so i knew that we had really strong managers here we got a great manager up in in bellingham obviously having cash position was an important thing so you know we had kind of financial benchmarks that we were looking to see before we were ready to ready to expand [Music] let's talk about the car the car what was the cost to get that going how do the costs break down if somebody wanted to do the same and start there yeah totally it kind of depends on the situation mine was kind of a unique situation in that i was gifted the carts and it had an old espresso machine on it it was like 80s or a cart a local church had it and they were just it was just taking up space in their basement and they knew that i was in the coffee so i offered to take it off their hands and they let me and so i renovated that car with the espresso machine on i put about 300 into replacing all the parts yeah i had like a 1500 startup loan that i took and so i started the cart with fifteen hundred dollars uh with you know all of our inventory and three card 1500 bucks for inventory what would it cost someone to buy a car would you um depends on on the volume that they're planning for and expecting a high volume cart will cost you know 15 20 grand um yeah with with a trailer and all that to do it right uh if you can be a little more low volume you can you can make it work for you know two and a half three grand any say any tips tricks with regards to starting with a card totally bonds yeah i always recommend people if you are looking to start a card or some sort of mobile operation view it as a marketing opportunity not as a as a finance uh driver um they tend not to do incredibly well as far as like raw numbers go but they can really build a loyal clientele and just a group of people that are really passionate about what you're doing and those people become your core and they get excited about your brands so let's talk about the key ingredients to an exceptional customer experience for a coffee shop so it stands out um i think there are two there's a very simple one welcoming people in when they come in so saying hello and saying goodbye when they leave and then also figuring out and determining how to ask questions and create an experience based on where the person is at um so for example some folks when they come in here they're wanting like a full coffee geek experience and they want to like geek out about the coffee the individual like varieties where it was grown how it was processed all that some folks just want their coffee and they want to get off to their day right so like learning how to read that training our staff to give that experience based on how people want to be served really creates a great experience all right well let's give you guys a quick tour a walk around of how you set the place up yeah why and why that's important so yeah so i mean for me the first thing is the guest experience always so walking in the door what are they seeing i've seen people hanging out couches here then over here we've got our kind of retail shelf that way when people are waiting in line there's something something to look at something to grab a lot of people put their retail after the point of sale which never works in coffee shops retail before point of sale absolutely that's important and then um you know this is kind of where we order with our pastries over here and our point of sale there and then our filter copies the ones we make by hand are right there that's really important because right here uh it takes a barista hand time they have to actually hold it and make the copy right here then they have to be able to multitask so they can make coffee and ring in orders at the same time so that's really huge then that wraps around here to where the barista is stationed when they're making espresso drinks that sort of thing this is all built just tight enough to where one person can work it by themselves or you can have multiple people working in it together okay without getting in each other's way oh hey paul let's uh let's go get some supplies real quick and we can chat a little on our way awesome let's do a supply round with maxwell we'll show you guys where he gets what he gets and what it costs yeah so you have a pretty unique um process of choosing your roasters and you change it every two months yeah tell our audience why you do that and where the idea came from really yeah what does that do for your business totally yeah so we're really focused on taste and experience and it's really easy for people to get caught up in branding and all sorts of other things that make people feel a certain way about a given roaster and that sort of thing i think that cup quality so the just the flavors themselves are the most important thing it creates an experience for people it also means that sometimes coffee shops get branded by the roasters that they serve and they don't build their own brand i see so i wanted to help avoid that by creating a system that's unique to us that helps us keep our quality really high which serves our values also helps us build our brand equity with our guests and knowing that they're going to get a consistently great experience with us regardless of whatever roaster we're serving at the moment they're going to find the best possible cup that they can get that's pretty cool [Music] maxwell tell us where we're at and why what we're doing here yeah we're at u.s chef store which is where we get a lot of our like dry paper goods cups napkins uh you know miscellaneous business items tell us when you first opened up the cart right now yeah coffee yeah how did you build brand awareness yeah and let people know you exist now i competed and did a lot of coffee competitions and those sorts of things so i had a little bit of like a people knew who i was because of the my involvement in that i think that really helped kind of start and kind of gave people something to be excited about that's true and then having our cart gave people a place to come and try out everything that we were doing and we were sourcing our coffee the same way that we are now with that kind of large-scale cupping process where we're tasting all the coffees so that really helped yeah i think it really helped just like give people an understanding of like what we were doing which i think just you know made it made it exciting if you're someone who's looking to start a business we're excited to share how taylor brands can help you jump start the process if you don't know where to start taylor brands is an ai driven one-stop shop for aspiring small business owners just answer a few questions on taylor brand's website and they will help you generate a logo create your brand identity and choose a domain website email and business cards they even help you get your llc and trademarks once everything is set up you can order branded merch and share your logo website and digital business cards on social media they can even help you with templates and get started making money the best part is you can get all this for the fixed cost payment with plans starting as low as 8.99 per month so make sure to check them out today and you can use code up flip 40 for 40 off taylor brands plans or click the link in the description below [Music] so what's your total monthly revenue here at this location in everett yeah this location's doing uh upper 70s low 80s every month per month is yeah is the industry for you or for you specifically let's focus on that is it pretty steady or is there a seasonality to high summer super low winter wow i mean it depends a little bit on on the location our shop here tends to do a little bit better in the summers with a small dip in like early fall or mid-fall i guess and then um picks back up and then dips right after christmas of course um so it kind of just depends on the location though you know if you're in a place that's got a really big downtown summer traffic then you're gonna you're probably gonna be busier but coffee shops historically tend to do well in the winter because it's warm drink people want to be inside but i would say the industry as a whole tends to be a little bit busier during the winter times okay um we're a little bit busy in the summer times here cool how much are you spending on an average month for advertising nothing you're not spending anything how are you advertising your brand your coffee your experience everything which platforms give you the best roi and bring in more people yeah i would say instagram has been our primary driver for most of the time that we've been open it's a really good way to stay connected with our guests regularly that's been really great we also use facebook um we're gonna start diving into tick tock a little bit i think at some point being non-native to tick tock for me means i gotta find find some folks on my crew who are uh gonna do a great job doing that so are you asking customers somehow to leave uh review or post the pictures like on cups is it on business card or does it happen naturally it happens naturally yeah uh you know i think part of it's you got to create places where they can so you know the design of the space is built around it there's great lighting in here that was all very intentional when we designed the space we we included lighting as part of our design process because it just makes for better pictures overall yeah i call it instagram bait instagram bait yeah so just little things that like help people you know have a nice place to take pictures because people want to share what's going on in their life and the experiences they have they're having so having good places to do that makes a big difference so it naturally encourages people to do it it's uh architectural influence i think they call it something like that right for somebody that wants to get into the coffee industry right whether it's a card or a smaller place but they don't have much money yeah what advice would you have for them are there options out there there are um it can be a little tough if you do start on your own and you start small it's a good idea to work for somebody else for a while first learn the ins and outs of the business on someone else's time i think that really makes a big difference and then you know you got to do your research more because there's a lot of small costs that show up those things can really hurt you so doing your due diligence is really really huge when you don't have a big budget so if you have a ton of money obviously you're not going to be able to start big start somewhere where you can exactly start small start with what makes sense find somewhere else to pop up like if you're trying to start a cart find a barber shop to post up into or find somewhere that uh you know people are that you can kind of get out there start building a strong foundation for your business and then just build up years and get some some experience doing it [Music] what about breakeven point when you got started what was your initial cost here yeah the build out everything else yeah the we took out a loan for about 290 000 the build out itself cost us 181 and then all the equipment was another about 65 70ish and then uh operating capital you know just to buy inventory flow labor all that sort of thing did you have a plan on how soon you wanted to see that back and if so what was the break-even point when you got all that money back yeah definitely we broke that point about six months in revenue-wise wow yeah and the overall initial investment we were really high value oriented in terms of what we invested in we invested in things that i knew would would give us our best chance at return what do you mean by that high value like yeah the equipment definitely uh efficiencies and systems on the bar so like we weigh all of our shots and instead of having to manually flex around with a scale we have a scale that's built into the espresso machine that automatically turns off this the espresso once it reaches the right weight we have high efficiency grinders that work really well so we put money into those things because those are primarily where our income comes from so the total throughput that we could process in a way that was still keeping quality high is much higher with those uh equipment investments than if we were trying to save money on something like an espresso machine uh you know that's the place where it's ultimately going to hurt you the most so [Music] why are systems super important for a coffee shop systems they provide a structure and a framework for everyone and they they keep you kind of uh on track and they force you to keep looking at metrics paying attention to things tell your numbers thing exactly uh i think they really help you have a handle on what's happening in your business um at all times they also help reduce waste they help increase efficiency so that way your staff are able to work more effectively and efficiently which creates more value in the business as a whole you can then share that with them and you know have more for yourself um it's a win-win at every level [Music] all right you guys ready to do blitz with maxwell and super frigid out here but it's fun all right product design online is asking how do much do people really care about the coffee beans like type quality versus the overall experience and consistency well i think they're tied together but uh research by the ncaa says that they care second most about quality first most about convenience so okay awesome alfonso sandovals asking what was your strategy as a beginner coffee shop owner to compete with the well-known bigger shop coffee shops i'm playing a different game so i'm not trying to have the same product every single time people come in i'm trying to create a fun experience for people every time they come in at aria is wondering how would you go about finding a gm or a system manager for your current store if you decide to scale and build another shop we are deciding the scale yeah i really try to hire from within um i try to give my staff the most opportunities that they can so that sometimes looks like investing in their education um so that's a big one but if not then the big question for me to ask is what what do i need from a person and what at what qualities am i looking for figuring out a process that helps you determine those qualities along the way instead of just in one interview uh havana day i think that's just is asking what system simple what systems simple as they may be do you have in place that allow your business to be sustainable without micromanagement yeah maybe we mentioned that in the interview but if anything else yeah definitely i definitely think um having checklists and those sorts of things are really important honestly the biggest one is easily communicating your values so our values we we use them as a rubric for decision making for our staff specifically so that way we don't have to micromanage people quinn blood moon who is asking if you could open up five more coffee shops where would you open um depends on the situation in the market too yeah bellingham let's talk about three more my initial plan for the next couple is more locally um you know you gain more efficiencies by having uh them within a certain geographic distance my first two were a little further apart than i was initially planning um just a good opportunity just an hour yeah an hour last question what's your favorite business book or books yeah my favorite business book is let my people go surfing by ivan trenard the founder of patagonia let my people go surfing um we will give out that book for free to one random person who comments below and answers these two questions how can we improve this channel and what business tool would you guys like us to build and that's it for blitz [Music] let's talk about some of the merch that you have and why it's here specifically who chose it just interested for our viewers how you chose all this yeah so you know being a coffee shop primarily poppy is a real big player so we have lots of different bags of coffee these are all properties that we bring in we serve all the time it's a beautiful label by the way yeah we have wine that's all chosen by our wine buyer we have equipment for brewing things that just help people make good coffee at home yeah and then what's behind you why don't we show our viewers yeah we've got some merch here so you have some branded stuff obviously yeah we do yeah but you mentioned you don't have a branded cup yeah why is that it's experience oriented so like our takeaway cups are definitely branded sorry takeaway is branded yes takeaway is branded um but you know sitting for here we don't have our logos on everything because people know where they're at and it creates like the atmosphere you know so i think it just helps create an environment where people feel welcomed also part of our current marketing strategy is not just built around getting our brand out there but around social media influence and organic growth and people sharing which always has geo tags and those sorts of things and we'll talk more about social media later yeah definitely [Music] what's the best way to create the best environment for your employees yeah what do you do specifically number one is uh having good open channels of communication creating a place where people want to work by having competitive pay having as many benefits as you can afford given where you're at um listening to people hearing what they have to say making sure that people feel valued and that they know that they're a part of a team and people want to work at a place where they believe in the vision of it the mission and why that place exists do you do like team meetings every morning yeah we have a monthly staff meeting and we use kind of intercommunication with slack and those sorts of things and then we have you know staff hangouts and those sorts of things for team building and whatnot so do you do any kind of encouragement of feedback to you or to your police like yeah look how does that work definitely yeah we have open communication lines so people can talk to me anytime you know everybody has my cell phone so they can text me and call me if they have any questions oh yes definitely um and we also have like monthly one-on-one meetings where we can kind of talk with everybody figure out what their experience has been like if there's any challenges that we can kind of help us address ahead of time um so yeah those are all ways that we do that [Music] what's the idea behind there as well just efficiency yeah so backup cups here like they they get moved over to here quickly um dishes that are dirty from over there they can get her cleaned they can close the bag they can get moved up to here and they don't have to ever cross paths so anytime people cross paths is a time where you lose efficiency anything else that you want to highlight in terms of this setup and its efficiency yeah others can copy and do the same yeah definitely it's really important to consider your flow of your espresso drinks and making sure that your movement finishes with your milk so having your grinders on the opposite side of where your drinks are being handed off is really important to see people make mistakes on that sometimes making sure everything's nice and tight but not too tight is really important anytime you have a barista moving side to side or anybody moving side to side or just moving in general that means they're inefficient [Music] what about other suppliers anything unique there that you want to highlight of value to our viewers how you choose them yeah definitely yeah we work really closely with our dairy grace harbor farms um they're up in linden i think you all did an episode with them actually we did check it out grace harbor farms is one of our episodes yeah that's pretty cool yeah so we work with them their milk is consistently the highest quality that i can find so it's just about quality for us the relationship has been really good too they've been amazing to us but that's been great uh and then you know we work with just kind of large larger suppliers for like paper goods and those sorts of things [Music] you've got an incredible coffee shop here thanks i think it's more than just that because i've tried your food absolutely amazing the vibe here it's loud but i hope you guys can hear everything we're going to talk about yeah um so let's talk about the food and the services that you that you offer and how did you come up with that who's the inspiration and so forth yeah totally on our food side of things that comes 100 from our chef her name is megan she's got some experience in food for a while and she just loved what we were doing and just wanted to help and she kept pestering me about doing a food program here and uh finally was confident i could pay her enough to do it and so then we said yes and she's it's become a huge part of our business what's the best seller give us a couple things that people just tend to love yeah or food items or coffee items both both yeah as far as coffee goes i get 12 oz espresso milk is classic we also sell a lot of filter coffees which are made by hand and then just straight up espresso we sell quite a lot of here and then as far as food goes our breakfast burritos are really popular here and then our buttermilk biscuit sandwich we make all of our our biscuits by hand hand laminated and they're really flaky and tender so yeah a lot of those [Music] what other systems do you want to highlight that you use here that are beneficial to your business definitely so we have sops or standard operating procedures for all of our stations um so like the espresso station the host station all of our kitchen stations so each of those has a standard operating procedure we use checklists regularly that way everyone's making sure that we're staying up on top of all of our activities we have a really in-depth uh pos point of sale system that helps keep track of every piece of data that we need to know we're really engaged with google and yelp and all instagram and facebook or in terms of marketing is that yeah where you can attend all those things so i view myself as someone who's just here to support my staff to give them the tools that they need to serve our guests the best possible way so building in systems that help with that in terms of training strategy uh helping ensure that we're communicating our menu changes to them because we do change our menus so much compared to a lot of other places so uh building interests right exactly you know and so building those communication systems in is really huge especially at scale um because you know the larger you get this the more small problems become big problems exactly so trying to clean all those up so that way we can scale um is really huge well said [Music] how do you manage your time as a business owner of multiple locations any time management tips any apps you use to communicate with all the other people working together yeah absolutely we use a lot of systems in the company we use home base for scheduling so all of our staff gets scheduled through that and it helps communicate it tells everyone what the schedule is at all times we slack for team communication and then we use gusto for payroll which is really like very easy i usually will try to sit out throughout a week and figure out and prioritize what are my most essential things that i need to get done this week what are the things that are of next importance and i try to structure them in that way and i try to think of my time in terms of what can i specifically do that nobody else within the company can do and try to attach as much as possible i estimate a dollar amount uh for how much economic value i'm adding per hour essentially so the things that are higher higher value are things i tend to focus on the things that i need to get done that nobody else can do are the things that i focus on so delegating ensuring that we have good roles clearly defined we have good job descriptions for all of our staff so that way everything is getting taken care of and then i have staff that pick up slack and they just if they see a problem they fix it [Music] well we're stuck at this aisle probably because we're buying something here yes okay i get some mediums and larges here so what are these running these days with inflation yeah they're uh 65 bucks it's definitely been a lot higher than it used to be um these used to go for around four four dollars and right when the pandemic started these got crazy expensive because of uh everything the need for it yeah yeah so they've come down a little bit which is nice so i need a lot of do all of your employees wear gloves all the time not all the time it just if they're handling something that's ready to eat we require gloves uh so anytime they're handling something that's not going to get cooked before it goes in someone's mouth to require gloves for is it cheaper to get a whole box it can't be or is it the same thing yeah definitely it's it is a little bit cheaper right now it's the same thing it is that's so they used to be cheaper but it depends on the thing like cups definitely cheaper to get by the case gotcha [Music] how many employees do you have and what's their average pay yeah so we have 20 full-time employees for the whole company uh 12 of them work here and everett and then eight work up in bellingham the average pay for most of our staff right now is uh 1650ish per hour plus tips um so split tips yeah everybody splits to equally across the across the shop so have you done it the other way i was always wondering because sometimes certain people split sometimes they don't yeah we started with the other way we did um yep and our food crew asked if they could be cut into the tip pool and our staff voted on it and agreed to it and it took a little bit of a hit at first and then it picked back up to where it was and it's now exceeded where it originally started so probably help the morale i would think it does yeah it helps everyone feel because our team our food team especially is so involved in the overall process of serving our guests running food out you know it helps everybody understand that we are working as a team to create the best experience for guests helps break down that like that's not my job mentality that sometimes happens um when we all kind of realize like our work together is for the purpose of serving our guests and making people feel welcomed so everybody takes ownership of that [Music] as far as must-have equipment obviously the espresso machine well how much was the espresso machine for example yeah the espresso machine was uh four hundred dollars no are you serious yeah wow yep and the grinders yep it is like a vehicle the grinders are about two and a half three grand a piece what else is a must-have just you know even if it's a small scale operator those yeah grinders are really important so grinders and espresso machines are where you should put the bulk of your money because that's the bulk where your business is coming from you should additionally uh buy good fridges because bad fridges break down and then you have to repair them all the time other things than that is having a good pos system making sure that it's connected to stable internet is really important uh because when that goes down you can't make money um and then if you're in a place where people want to sit you gotta have good wi-fi it's gonna have good internet because that's how people use coffee shops and you have awesome furniture here too yes so that's a must-have right guest experience right if you could go back and give yourself the younger version even though you're pretty young yeah the younger version a piece of advice what would it be one or two things no no i think the first one is to continue investing in yourself and to learn to say no sometimes yeah yeah not take every opportunity that comes to you have you had to do that yeah there have been a few location expansion opportunities that we've passed on that seemed like they make good sense but weren't quite the they were close and they just weren't slam dunks uh that could make or break yeah yeah especially when you're small you know when you think about it if you have one location and you go to two one of those fails that's fifty percent of your business right if you have ten locations and one fails that's only ten percent of your business so making your steps carefully at the early outset is important to me so these are the cups how much we're getting 600 of them yeah these ones are about a hundred dollars a case that's 35 wow from where it was just two years ago you know you could go through those pretty quick like myself during the interview i used one cup and i wanted to go for a second because i threw the other one in the garbage something yeah how do you make that more efficient one of the big ones is having as much reusable as possible yeah i'm encouraging people to bring reusable cups if they're planning on going elsewhere and then we just do a lot of dishes [Music] profit margins where are they at um on the high to the low and yeah i'll elaborate yeah it depends on the on what we're doing specifically coffee is a really high labor activity you know it's like when you go to a bar and you have a beer you know it takes a bartender 25 seconds to pour a blast of beer versus it takes a minute and a half of someone handcrafting everything here so labor's higher here good point so but on our low ends it's probably the things on our retail shelf you know 30 profit margin for most of our retail items and then you know like our profit margins are closer to like three four hundred percent that's uh gross profit so just minus cogs but overall you know what we're shooting for as a business uh our profit margins are about on a good year is about ten percent that low yeah i thought it'd be much higher than that yeah the industry standard for restaurant food and beverage is about 10 for somebody that's doing carbs right now but just thinking to go brick and mortar what was your story why here what's important as part of the coffee shop industry every good business has to fill a need period i mean a lot of people um it's particularly folks that are interested in opening coffee shops it's been a dream that they've had for a really long time and that sort of thing i think sometimes they miss the importance of filling a need everett had a need for specialty coffee there was nothing like what we're doing here it has a strong community of people who care about their products we have close access to a lot of farms a strong brewing scene but was nothing like this so it seemed like a really amazing opportunity for us also the commercial rents are really low here compared to the rest of the puget sound region okay um so it you know it felt like we were in a structurally stable place from a business perspective to be able to take a chance on doing something that nobody else had done here before as far as the wrench what's your overhead specifically just utilities and lease for this location it's about four percent four percent yeah what's the dollar amount um it's 2800 for uh 1700 square foot that's not bad yeah okay yeah they're really affordable here in everest [Music] maxwell let's talk uh briefly about how your systems have changed as you continue to grow like what indicated that hey i need to i need a new system in place because we're at x point yeah definitely you generally tend to notice when your systems aren't working when you when you see problems so paying attention to your numbers is always huge so uh watching your cash flow you know if you're if you just find yourself you know running out of cash uh it helps you understand yeah totally um also communication and feedback from our my staff is really huge so incorporating their experiences always trying to ask good questions to understand like are things being missed when certain things that i expect to happen aren't happening then i know that that's usually some form of a communication breakdown there has hasn't been an effective system to help communicate that value to my staff basically what indicates you have new systems potentially if you have a problem hey there may not be a system in place that's what we're having exactly yeah when it boils down almost always all of the problems that you run into are generally related to systems outside of you know personal conflicts within within your team [Music] what is the number one thing that you struggle with as a business owner today yeah businesses are often attached to personalities and i definitely notice there are certain things about my personality just how i operate that are weaknesses and one of those things is that i tend to have a lot going on in my head but i don't always share it so one of the big efforts that we've been making this year is just to improve our company communication to our staff and creating better systems for that communication awesome okay well you guys are enjoying this episode we appreciate it quick like subscribe and hit that bell so that you don't miss any of our videos anything else you want to highlight when it comes to social media exposure instagram for those running coffee shops i want to get in the same industry yeah definitely i think for like brick and mortar locations uh for coffee shops staying on top of your reviews is really important what i mean by that is responding to them taking time to take them seriously you should treat reviews not just as the interaction with the person but also anybody who's looking at the reviews uh too i think that's really important overall word of mouth is the most important thing for a brick and mortar retail business like this um when people are excited about an experience they want to tell their friends and that's the best advertising you can ask for so we also are getting ready to work on like email marketing for online stuff so we're trying to take our online component of our business a little bit more seriously we didn't have space to do it here and so we just weren't able to capitalize on that but we have just secured a space to be able to connect with guests that maybe have moved or they believe in our brand they want to buy our copy and the ways that we buy our copy so we're getting ready to launch a subscription service those sorts of things where email is going to be a much more important part of our business strategy so no email list yet but that's in the future yes exactly [Music] how many hours a week do you work then on that no do you have to go between here in bellingham though i do yeah i'm up in bellingham twice a week it depends on the week i would say my average week is about 60 hours a week some weeks i'm up in 75 some weeks i'm you know chilling at 35 just depends on the week but a father of two yeah father two how do you how do you work uh work life manage that because that's important right yeah you burn out you go crazy so what are you it's it's seasons we tend to roll things in and do uh family time while other things are happening so like last night we were here my daughter has a unicycle parade tomorrow and she was decorating her unicycle here at the shop while we were working on stuff so they kind of get combined learn to blend them yeah exactly and i try to protect my time with with my kids and my family as much as possible [Music] any last pieces of advice to people in all kinds of industries or maybe specifically the coffee industry what would you say with all your experience oh man um investing in people is really huge um you know everything comes back down to people uh relationships community your staff is super huge um so you know continuing to invest in relationships and people is really important and uh take care of yourself yeah yeah yeah i hope you guys enjoyed this high energy interview with maxwell the owner of narrative coffee we appreciate you watching take a second to like subscribe and hit that bell so that you don't miss any of our episodes and thank you so much for watching

2022-05-10 22:56

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